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I LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. I 

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1 No. i JslW 



jgUKITED STATES OF AMERICA. « 



"SHALL" AND "WILL;" 



OR, 



TWO CHAPTERS 



FUTURE AUXILIARY VERBS. 






Br SIR EDMUND W. HEAD, Bart. 






>?3 




LONDON: 

JOHN MUERAT, ALBEMARLE STBEET. 

1856. 



The right of Translation is reserved. 






LONDON : PRINTED BY W. CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET, 
AND CHARING CROSS. 



PREFACE. 



Some years ago I found myself discussing with an 
accomplished French lady the various intricacies of 
" shall" and " will" The result of that conversa- 
tion was, that I amused myself by putting together 
the remarks which I had met with, or which sug- 
gested themselves, on the subject of these puzzling 
auxiliaries. The two chapters now laid before the 
reader make no pretension to originality or profound 
research; they owe their origin to the discussion 
mentioned above, and they might have been better 
worth reading if I had, whilst writing them, had 
constant access to a large philological library. For 
the speculations in some of the notes I must ask 
indulgence. 

E. W. H. 



a 2 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

Want of a future tense in languages of the Teutonic stock — 
Shall and Will — English future in actual use — Ame- 
rican, Scotch, and Irish idiom — Apparent anomalies in 
English — Rules of English idiom in categorical sen- 
tences — Principle on which these rules are founded — 
Hypothetical, contingent, and interrogative sentences — 
Growth of the English idiom . . Page 5 



CHAPTER II. 

Future auxiliaries in other languages — Celtic and German 
futures — Verbs used as future auxiliaries — Haban — 
Munan — " Shall" and its forms — " Will" and its 
forms — Analogies to the Greek — " Werden " — Fu- 
tures of the Romance languages and principles of their 
formation by an auxiliary verb 54 

APPENDIXES. 

(A.) Use of " se " in Latin 86 

(B.) Future form of verb substantive 88 

(C.) Verb " to owe," " ought," &c . . . . 89 

(D.) Etymology of " shall " 92 

(E.) Future use of "is," &c 93 

(F.) Origin of Latin desiderative verbs 94 

Index 97 



"SHALL 55 AND "WILL. 55 



CHAPTEE I. 



" They may talk as they will of the dead languages. 
" Our auxiliary verbs give us a power which the 
" ancients, with all their varieties of mood and 
" inflection of tense, never could attain." l Such 
are Southey's words, and I believe them to be true. 
The observations of a more distinguished philologist; 
William von Humboldt, 2 may be quoted in con- 
firmation of these views. Speaking of the transition 
from a synthetic to an analytic structure in lan- 
guage, he says, "The practical convenience of ex- 
" pressing the sense supersedes the fanciful pleasure 
" originally felt in combining elementary sounds 
" with their full-toned syllables, each pregnant with 
" meaning. The inflected forms are broken up into 
" prepositions and auxiliaries. Men sacrifice other 
" advantages to that of ready understanding, for 
" without doubt this analytic system not only 
" diminishes the labour of the intellect, but in par- 



1 The Doctor, p. 1. What may be called our "continuous 
present," " I am reading," affords a good instance of this greater 
precision. 

2 Verschiedenheit des Menschlichen Sprachbaues, s. 284. 



6 " SHALL " AND " WILL." Chap. I. 

" ticular cases it attains a degree of precision which 
" is reached with greater difficulty by the synthetic 
" structure." 

Perhaps no better illustration of the truth of this 
last proposition could be found than the one which 
is afforded by the English use of ' ' shall " and " will " 
for the expression of the future tense. 

The reader will find that the languages of the 
Teutonic stock were all deficient in the means of 
expressing futurity, and I shall hereafter endeavour 
to trace in a superficial manner the various devices 
for supplying this defect to which they had recourse. 
It will be shown too that in the disruption of the 
Latin and the reconstruction of the Eomance tongues 
a similar want was created, and remedied by an 
auxiliary verb. In the latter family of languages, 
however, the principle inherent in the parent tongue 
has for the most part prevailed, and has caused this 
auxiliary to become, in fact, an inflection t)f the 
verb. No such process of construction was carried 
on in the Teutonic dialects. So far as English is 
concerned, we remain with two auxiliaries appli- 
cable to the expression of the future; both were 
originally employed for the same purpose in other 
languages of the same stock, but their use has been 
worked out among us, until it has attained a degree 
of nicety remarkable in itself and most difficult of 
acquirement by foreigners. Indeed, the majority of 
those whose native language is English — the Scotch, 
the Irish, and our American brethren, whether in 
the colonies or the United States, rarely adhere 
with strictness to the English idiom. 



Chap. I. QUESTION TO BE ANSWERED. 7 

It is not therefore surprising that the distinction 
between " shall" and fi will " should have been 
treated as capricious or unintelligible ; it is easier 
to do this than to explain it thoroughly, but the 
difficulty of accounting for all the phenomena of 
language does not make their existence less real. 
Buttmann has truly said of many such matters, " The 
" idiom of language admits only of being observed; 
" let no man ask ' Why ?' " 3 We cannot explain 
why one form should be current in Ireland and 
Scotland and another in England, any more than 
why the Athenians did not speak the same Greek 
as the Thebans. So long, however, as the literature 
and cultivated speech of England are the test of 
pure and grammatical English, the distinction be- 
tween " shall " and " will " cannot be overlooked. 
I shall hereafter refer to the reviewers and gram- 
marians, who, it has been truly said, "try to cover 
" their evasion of this difficulty by a little blus- 
" tering." 4 

It must be borne in mind that the question to be 
answered, with reference to the auxiliaries "shall" 
and " will," is not " which verb may we possibly 
" use in speaking of a future act?" but "which 
" verb must we use when we intend to express 
" futurity, and nothing more ?" Now it is not 
always easy to isolate, as it were, this simple notion 
of futurity, and separate it from the shades of mean- 
ing, which, though not identical with it, may imply 



3 "Man frage nicht warum — der Sprachgebrauch lasst sich 
nur beobachten." — Lexilogus, b. i. s. 239. 
. 4 Philological Museum, vol. ii. pp. 219, 220. 



8 " SHALL " AND " WILL." Chap. I. 

it or approximate to it. The auxiliaries now em- 
ployed to express the future were originally selected 
for this purpose, because they conveyed the idea of 
a state of things or a condition such as probably 
implied futurity. It is not therefore singular that 
it should be sometimes difficult to strip off these 
shades of special signification, or to say which aux- 
iliary may most properly be employed in a given 
case. A French future, such as "il viendra," may 
perhaps be best translated by " he will come," or by 
■" he shall come ;" the context alone, the dependence 
or independence of the sentence, or perhaps the tone 
of the speaker, must guide the translator in the 
selection of the proper auxiliary. In the abstract 
either may be right, but in an individual case they 
cannot therefore be used indifferently. It may 
often be that the English idiom will oblige the 
translation to be more definite than the original. 

What is called " the future tense" of an English 
verb is commonly thus given : — 

Sing. 1. I shall die. 

2. Thou wilt die. 

3. He will die. 
Plur. 1. We shall die. 

2. You will die. 

3. They will die. 

That is to say, an auxiliary is employed to express 
the future for the first person, different from the 
auxiliary used to express the future for the second 
and third persons. Both these auxiliaries are words 
which have been used for this purpose in other lan- 
guages, but the peculiarity in modern English is 



Chap. L BUSINESS OF GRAMMAR. 9 

tlieir systematic and regular appropriation to dif- 
ferent persons. Professor de Morgan 5 remarks, 
In introducing the common mode of stating the 
future tenses, Grammar has proceeded as if she were 
more than a formal science. She has no more 
business to collect together ' I shall/ ' thou wilt/ 
5 he will/ than to do the same with ' I rule/ 
' thou art ruled/ ' he is ruled.' ' Such a future 
tense offers, no doubt, what Dr. Latham 6 calls " a 
" logical, not an etymological sequence;" but if it 
be the business of Grammar to inform us how a verb 
is conjugated, it is surely her business to tell us 
how the future tense is expressed in all its persons. 
If there be no simple form which expresses time, or 
other modifications of sense by mere inflection, . it 
appears to be " the business " of grammar to tell us 
by what contrivance the want is supplied. The 
question cannot be passed over in silence because a 
different auxiliary supplies the place of an altered 
form in the first person and the second. Grammar 
is, no doubt, a formal science, but part of its subject 
matter is the adaptation of form to meaning ; the 
question now before us is the employment of verbs 
etymologically distinct as if they were mere gram- 
matical forms, and with this, it appears to me, 
grammar, as the reflex of practice, is necessarily 
concerned. 



5 Transactions of Philolog. Society. It seems to me that on 
the same principle no French Grammar had " any business to 
collect together" the present of the verb substantive and its 
imperfect "etais," derived, as this latter is, from a different 
root. 

6 English Language, p. 238. 



10 " SHALL " AND " WILL." Chap. I. 

Before proceeding to discuss the actual practice 
of the English language in the use of " shall M and 
" will," it is right, though scarcely necessary, to 
observe that the past tenses " should " and " would " 
may be assumed to follow a rule analogous to that 
which guides us in the employment of their presents. 
When the auxiliaries " should " and " would " are 
applied for the purpose of expressing a subjunctive 
mood, they are, in fact, only contingent or hypo- 
thetical futures. When a man says, " I should 
" have caught the fever if I had visited that 
" person," he announces something which would 
have been a future event, which might have been 
foretold as such, if a certain condition had been 
fulfilled. It is right in such a sentence to use 
" should," because in a corresponding categorical 
sentence "shall" and not "will" would be the 
proper future auxiliary for the first person : "I 
" shall catch the fever if I visit that person." On 
the other hand, in such a sentence as " He would 
have gone to London if the weather had been fine," 
" would," and not " should," is employed, because 
the proper future auxiliary with the third person is 
" He will go to London," &c. " He shall go to 
" London," or "He should have gone to London," 
would be understood to convey nothing except the 
fact that it was his duty to go. " Should," so em- 
ployed, is no longer a mere auxiliary denoting the 
contingent nature of the proposition : it is the past 
tense of the verb " shall " — " to be obliged." 

In ordinary English "will" is never used with 
the first person unless a notion of volition, more or 



Chap. I. EXAMPLES FROM CHALMERS. 11 

less strong, is conveyed by the speaker. On the 
other hand, "shall," when applied to any person 
other than the speaker, or supposed speaker, ex- 
presses something beyond mere futurity — that is 
to say, obligation, command, destiny, or external 
control of some kind. But in Ireland, Scotland, 
and Xorth America, this appropriation of " shall " 
to the first person for expressing the simple future 
is not acknowledged in common parlance, nor always 
observed even in written composition. For instance, 
Chalmers wrote, " I am able to devote as much time 
" and attention to other subjects as I will be under 
" the necessity of doing next winter." 7 Kow had 
this sentence run " as I will do next winter," the 
use of " will" would not necessarily have grated on 
an English ear, because the writer might possibly 
have meant " as I intend to do next winter;" but 
the context — the notion of necessity — makes every 
shade of volition inadmissible, and therefore " will " 
strikes us at once as incorrect because it must stand 
for the pure future. 

The following passage from the same writer is 
still more illustrative of the rule : " Compel me to 
" retire and I shall be fallen indeed ; I tvoidd feel 
" myself blighted in the eyes of all my acquaintance ; 
" I would never more lift up my face in society ; I 
" would bury myself in the oblivion of shame and 
" solitude; I would hide me from the world; I 
" ivould be overpowered by the feelings of my own 
• : disgrace ; the torments of self-reflection would 
i; pursue me." 8 The two " woulds" in italics are 

7 Life, vol. i. p. 73. 8 Life, vol. i. p. 85. 



12 " SHALL " AND " WILL." Chap. I. 

manifestly wrong, and strike us at once. Why is 
this ? Because in these two cases the context ex- 
cludes all notion of will or intention, and therefore 
we know they must be meant to express the simple 
future, which they ought not to do with the first 
person. "I would never more lift up my face" 
may possibly be right, inasmuch as it may mean " I 
" should choose the alternative of hiding myself 
" from the world." Both this and the two 
" woulds " which follow next cannot be objected to 
with confidence, because they are connected with 
acts which are voluntary at the moment, and the 
writer might, perhaps, be entitled to the benefit of 
the doubt. He has shown, however, by the other 
portions of the sentence that he was ignorant of the 
English idiom. 

So Hugh Miller in his amusing book, ' My 
Schools and my Schoolmasters ' — " A countryman, 
" telling us what he had seen, remarked that if the 
" conflagration went on as it was doing, we would 
" have, as our next season's employment, the Old 
" Town of Edinburgh to rebuild." — p. 333. 

Here, again, are extracts from speeches in the 
Assemblies of two British colonies : — " Let the 
" British Government continue the protection of last 
" year and we will be all right." 

"In a very short time we will probably find 
" ourselves on a new footing, and feel the animat- 
6i ing effects of the most important commercial 
" movement of this country." 

It is clear enough that the speakers in both sen- 
tences intended simply to express the future. 



Chap. I. AMERICAN WRITERS. 13 

Thus, too, in a New York paper 9 I have read, 
" None of our coal-mines are deep, but the time is 
" coming when we will have to dig deeper in search 
" of both coals and metallic ores." 

A distinguished American diplomatist, Mr. J. Y. 
Mason, in his letter to M. Drouyn de L'huys on the 
insults offered to Mr.. Soule, is reported to have ex- 
pressed himself thus : 10 "I feel assured that I will 
" not have the misfortune to find conflicting views 
." held by one so enlightened as your Excellency." 

Mr. Brace in his book on Hungary, repeating 
the words of some Hungarians with reference to Kos- 
suth, makes them say, " He ought to have known 
" we ivould be ruined." Again he employs " will " 
with the first person as follows : " They say I will 
" find such portraits in all the cottages of the pea- 
" sants through the village." u In these two last 
cases the future sentences are dependent, and placed 
in the mouths of others ; but still the subject of the 
future verb being the first person, the auxiliary 
"should" or "shall" is required to express the 
English future ; " would " can only mean " we 
" wished to be ruined." 

Grimm 12 tells us that "will" is used on the 
Ehine instead of " werde " to express the future ; 
singularly enough, only with the first person ; that is 



9 Scientific American. New York, Oct. 23, 1852. 

10 November 6, 1854. 

11 Brace's Hungary, pp. 125, 224. Mr. Brace is, I think, a 
native of Rhode Island, or Connecticut. 

12 Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache, b. ii. s. 908. Compare 
Deutsche Gramm., b. iv. s. 181. See below, p. 68. 



14 " SHALL " AND « WILL." Chap. I. 

to say, the idiom is exactly the reverse of the 
English one. 

Mr. Guest 13 says, " The use of ' shall' to denote 
" future time may be traced to a remote antiquity 
" in our language ; that of 'will' is of much later 
" origin, and prevailed chiefly in our northern 
" dialects : — 

" But be I ken'd heir, wallaway 
" I will be slane." 

Lyndsay, Pari, of Love, iii. 1. 

" I will win for him if I can : if not, I will gain nothing 
" but my shame and the odd hits." — Hamlet, v. 2. 

The first of these instances exactly corresponds to 
the Scotch use of "will" at the present day, as 
exemplified above from Chalmers. I doubt very 
much whether the second is a perfectly clear ex- 
ample of the future use of "will;" that is to say, 
whether Shakspere did not intend to convey some- 
thing more in Hamlet's " will." Hamlet announces 
his readiness to undertake the match with Laertes 
in order to decide the King's wager. In reply to 
the lord who asks him to do this he says, " I will 
" walk here in the hall ; if it please his majesty, it 
" is the breathing-time of day with me ; let the foils 
" be brought, the gentleman willing, and the king 
" hold his purpose, I will win for him if I can : if 
" not, I will gain nothing but my shame and the odd 
" hits." I conceive Hamlet's speech to mean, " I 
" am ready to do my best to win the King's wager, 



13 Transactions of Philolog. Society, March 13, 1846. 



Chap. I. IRISH USE OF "SHALL." 15 

" and I am ready to put up with defeat; I am 
" content to take my chance, and I ask no reward." 
If this view be right, the second " will " means more 
than the simple future, and furnishes no example for 
our present purpose. 

Nothing can be easier than to put cases in which 
the use of the two forms seems at first sight to be a 
matter of complete indifference. It is precisely 
because the shade which separates them is so slight 
that they are often confounded and misapplied. It 
seems practically much the same thing whether I 
say to a friend, " I shall be at home to-morrow when 
" you call," or, " I will be at home to-morrow when 
" you call." On a little reflection, however, the 
difference is clear. If the fact that my friend is 
going to call makes me determined to be at home — 
if my mind is made up in consequence of what has 
passed between us, and I announce an intention — 
then " will " is the proper auxiliary. If, on the other 
hand, I merely inform my friend that he will find 
me at a certain time — it may be because I cannot 
help it, or it may be because I choose it — then 
"shall" is the verb required for the simple state- 
ment of the future fact with the first person. 

On this principle it is that the answer of an Irish 
servant when told to do a thing— " I shall, Sir " — 
is incorrect. " Shall," no doubt, is right as the 
future, but what he means to profess is his intention 
to obey, as consequent on the order. The best 
mode of testing this view is to take some act which 
cannot, from its nature, be voluntary. If a man 
say to me, " I will have the gout when you call," 



16 " SHALL » AND " WILL." Chap. I. 

I, as an Englishman, could only understand him to 
mean, " I will pretend," or " I will try to have 
" the gout." " I shall have the gout," might 
be properly said by one who felt premonitory 
symptoms of the disease. An Irishman or an 
American would not interpret these phrases in the 
same way, and it is precisely this which gives 
the point to the old story of the Irishman in the 
water, who exclaimed, " I will be drowned and 
" nobody shall save me." Indeed this sentence 
illustrates perfectly the misapplication of either 
verb ; " will " with the first person implies volition 
where volition is impossible, and " nobody shall," 
&c, forbids that which the context shows must be 
desired above all things. 

It may be supposed that Burke has violated the 
rule in the following sentence of his ' Observations 
on a late State of the Nation,' when speaking of the 
improbable supposition that George Grrenville would 
try to reimpose the Stamp Act : he says, "If he 
" does, I will predict that some of the fastest friends 
" of that minister will desert him on this point." I 
believe, however, though Burke was an Irishman, 
that this sentence is like the speech of Hamlet — an 
apparent exception only. " I will predict," really 
means, " I will take upon myself," or " choose to 
" predict," 

I have said that the Americans do not usually 
observe with great strictness the distinction between 
" shall" and " will " with the first person; yet I 
have heard it asserted that this inaccuracy belongs 
to the United States only south of New England ; 



Chap, I. AMERICAN USAGE. 17 

and certainly in a very remarkable trial in Massa- 
chusetts — that of Abner Eogers for the murder of 
Charles Lincoln 14 — much importance was attached 
to the use, by the prisoner, of one auxiliary or the 
other. The counsel appeared clearly to appreciate 
the difference. A witness, Warren B. Parke, who 
was sent to search Eogers after the murder, gave his 
evidence thus : — " He (Rogers) said * I have fixed 
" ' the warden, and I'll have a rope round my neck 
" ' to-night.' On the strength of what he said I 
" took his suspenders (braces) from him." Cross- 
examined — " His words were, ' I will have a rope/ 
" not * I shall have a rope.' I am sure the word 
" was will, and not shall" Mr. Parker, Counsel 
for the Commonwealth, in commenting on the speech 
says, " It shows a contemplation of murder and sui- 
" cide — a designed voluntary escape from the penal- 
" ties of the law, and a consciousness of the malig- 
" nity and criminality of his actions." The defence 
set up was insanity, and on that ground the prisoner 
was acquitted. I confess I do not think that the 
inference either way, from the auxiliary used, was 
worth much, especially if in the United States so 
little exactness in the application of these verbs exists 
in popular usage : but this is immaterial ; the argu- 
ment shows that the distinction is admitted in theory, 



14 Before the Supreme Court of Massachusetts in 1844; 
reported by Bigelow and Bemis: Boston, 1844. Lincoln was 
warden of the State Penitentiary. The Report is particularly 
interesting with reference to the doctrine of Criminal Lunacy 
and its limits in jurisprudence. It is right to add that after 
the lapse of some time the prisoner turned out really insane. 

B 



18 " SHALL " AND " WILL." Chap. I. 

and I do not impute the inaccuracy to the best 
American writers. 

On the other hand it is, perhaps, worth while to 
quote some apparent instances of the converse error, 
that is, of the use of " shall " with the third person 
where we should expect to find " will." The fol- 
lowing passage occurs in a note of George III., 
written after his first illness : 15 — 

" His Majesty is perfectly satisfied with the zeal 
" and attention of Dr. Gisborne, in whose absence 
" he will consult Sir Francis Milman; but cannot 
" bear the idea of consulting any of the Willis 
" family, though he shall ever respect the character 
" and conduct of Dr. Eobert Willis." Here the first 
" will" is perfectly regular, but the " shall" with 
the third person, in the latter part of the sentence, 
seems to violate the ordinary idiom. Its use, how- 
ever, admits of explanation, and probably means 
that the King was obliged, notwithstanding his pre- 
judices, to entertain the feeling which he describes : 
he knew that such a feeling was unreasonable. It 
might perhaps again be supposed that, writing as the 
Sovereign constantly does, formally in the third 
person, though virtually in the first, he employed 
the form properly with the latter to convey the 
simple future. This last supposition seems to me 
very improbable ; and I conceive that " shall " in this 
case conveys something more than mere futurity. 
Again, when Boswell 16 was discussing the fate of 

15 Campbell's Lives of the Chancellors. Life of Lord Eldon, 
vol. vii. p. 148. 

•« Croker's edition (Murray, 1835), vol. vii. p. 258. The 



Chap. I. DR. JOHNSON— BUTTMANN. 19 

Hackman, who murdered Miss Ray, and mentioned 
the criminal's prayer for the mercy of Heaven, Dr. 
Johnson is reported to have replied, " I hope he 
" shall find mercy." If he had used "will," the 
sentence would have expressed a mere conjectural 
hope of an undecided future; but Johnson was 
speaking of something already concluded by the fiat 
of an Almighty Judge, though the nature of the 
decision was unknown to the speaker, and could not 
be controlled by him. The sentence is equivalent 
to, "I hope he is destined to find mercy." 

On this principle, " shall " is the proper auxiliary 
for prophecy when predicting events predetermined 
and foreknown. It is not necessary that the speaker 
should profess to control the event himself; but he 
speaks of it as something due, and therefore naturally 
denoted by a word which originally means " to 
" owe." ]6a Buttmann 1 7 remarks truly that the forms 
of expression which belong to a supreme power when 
ordaining, and the forms which announce, on divine 
authority, the existence of such ordinance, are often 
one and the same. In all such cases, "shall" is 
not to be taken as the mere sign of the future tense. 

I do not know whether the vexed question of the 
authorship of the ' Vestiges of Creation ' has ever 
been conclusively settled. 18 There is a passage in 

reader may attach what value he pleases to the fact that Boswell, 
who reports the conversation, was more or less Scotch. 
16 a See below, p. 64. 

17 Lexilogus, b. i. s. 127, in v. Tixftuo. 

18 Since this passage was written, I have seen it confidently 
stated that the book was composed by Mr. Robert Chambers. (?) 
The words occur in the " Note Conclusory," p. 410. 

B 2 



20 " SHALL " AND " WILL." Chap. I. 

that work which has always appeared to me to 
favour the notion that it was written by a native of 
Scotland or Ireland rather than by an Englishman. 
The words are as follows : — 

" I do not expect that any word of praise which 
" this work may elicit shall ever be responded to by 
" me, or that any word of censure shall ever be 
" parried or deprecated." Now, if the sentence had 
run thus : — " No word of praise, &c., shall ever be 
" responded to by me, and no word of censure shall 
" ever be parried," it would simply have expressed, 
in ordinary English, the author's determination to 
abstain from doing that which he might do if he 
pleased ; but the neutral word " expect " requires 
the dependent verbs to carry with them the notion 
of simple futurity. The writer is not talking of 
what he has determined to do, but of what he anti- 
cipates will happen ; and therefore "shall" strikes 
an English ear as a violation of the common idiom. 

Another use of " shall," which is apparently ano- 
malous, meets us in such sentences as the following 
one of Theodore Hook. 19 Gilbert Grurney, after 
listening to the narrative of his friend Firkin's sor- 
rows in consequence of having been Lord Mayor, 



19 Gilbert Gurney, vol. iii. c. 2. I believe that in Scotland 
" will " is used in a manner analogous to the use of " shall " 
referred to in the text ; that is to say, it is employed to express 
a result, where no future sense is obvious at first sight, but 
where the fact is matter of inference. " That will be my book," 
means, " If I am not mistaken, that will turn out to be my book." 
The speaker means all the time to assert that it is his book now, 
but the assertion is, I suppose, of a milder character, like that 
of the Greek optative with av. 



Chap. I. BURKE— HORACE WALPOLE. 21 

exclaims, " And I said to myself, ' This shall not be 
" ' a bad man, let them say what they will. ' 3 This 
application of " shall " is not uncommon, and ex- 
presses what may be called a compulsory inference. 
" In spite of all that can be said, this must be the 
" necessary conclusion" It is, in short, the result 
due to the facts : the notion of debt is still present. 
There is considerable analogy between this idiom 
and the modern German use of "soil" for what is 
assumed to be true on report, which I shall notice 
hereafter. 19 a 

Possibly the following example in Burke's speech 
on conciliation with America may be explained on 
a similar principle : — " When we allege that it is 
" against reason to tax a people under so many re- 
" strain ts in trade as the Americans, the Noble Lord 
"in the blue riband shall tell you that the restraints 
" in trade are futile and useless." That is to say, 
" The Noble Lord in the blue riband is sure to tell 
" you this as a matter of course: it is the answer 
" destined to be made by him to such an argu- 
" ment." Burke uses in this case the language of 
prophecy. 

Horace Walpole, in one of his letters, 20 speaking 
of the massacre of the Guards of Louis XVI., says, 
6 ' The National Assembly dare not avenge them, as 
" they should lose the favour of the intoxicated 
" people." Now it may be supposed that " as they 
"should" represents "because (or inasmuch as) 
" they would ;" but in reality it is an imitation of 



19 a See below, p. 66. 

20 Walpole's Letters. Edition of 1846, vol. vi. p. 368. 



22 " SHALL " AND " WILL." Chap. I. 

the classical idiom, and resembles the u ut " in the 
following lines of Propertius : 21 — 

" Sic miH te referas levis, ut non altera nostro 
" Limine formosos intulit ulla pedes," 

or the " as " in Dryden's translation of Horace's 
* Sic te Diva potens Cypri :' — 

" So may the auspicious Queen of Love, 
" And the twin stars the seed of Jove, 
" To thee, sacred ship, be kind, 
" As thou to whom the Muse commends 
" The best of poets and of friends, 
" Dost thy committed pledge restore." 

The "as," however, of Walpole introduces what a 
lawyer might call a " condition subsequent" instead 
of a " condition precedent." "Should" expresses, 
not the reason for a certain act, but its sanction or 
inevitable consequence. The notion, therefore, of 
what is due or sure to follow is appropriate, and the 
verb itself is not a mere future auxiliary. 

Having gone through a few cases of apparent 
anomalies in the use of these verbs, I pass on to one 
of the most striking points in connection with them, 
and that is their application in oblique and de- 
pendent sentences. 

As a simple proposition we say, in the third 
person, " he will go ;" but if the sentence be placed 
in the mouth of the person of whom the future act 
is predicated — if the subject of the future verb be- 
come the supposed speaker or thinker — then u shall " 
becomes the natural and proper auxiliary. " He 



21 Lib. i. El. xviii. 1. 11. 



Chap. I. OBLIQUE SENTENCES. 23 

" says that he shall go," or " He hopes that he 
" shall go," no longer conveys any notion of destiny, 
command, or obligation, such as is necessarily im- 
plied by " You shall go," or " He shall go." 

On the other hand, with the first person, the fact 
that the future sentence is placed in the mouth of 
another does not involve a change in the auxiliary 
verb employed. " I shall go," and " He thinks (or 
" says) that I shall go," are equally correct. " Will " 
would in either case be inadmissible in a pure future 
sense, as we shall immediately see by testing the 
principle with a verb which excludes the notion of 
volition. " He thinks that I will die " jars upon an 
English ear, though it would not perhaps produce 
the same effect in Scotland or America. 

The reason of this retention of " shall" with the 
first person appears to be this: — The fact that the 
dependent sentence is in the first person implies of 
itself that the subject of the future verb and the 
person repeating the sentence, whether placed in his 
own mouth or not, are virtually one and the same. 
The practice with the second person, in oblique 
sentences, does not seem quite so clear. It seems to 
me one may often say, with almost equal propriety, 
" You think you shall do it," or " You think you 
" will do it;" " You said you should be in town on 
" Saturday;" " You thought you would die." At 
the same time I incline to believe that where the 
act is inconsistent with the exercise of will, " shall " 
is the more proper auxiliary in such dependent sen- 
tences placed in the mouth or thoughts of the person 
whom we are addressing. When we come to discuss 



24 " SHALL " AND " WILL." Chap. I. 

the reason of the application of " shall" and " will" 
to different sentences, it will be clear that the prin- 
ciple would justify either in such a case, though it 
may be maintained that as " will " is a sort of inter- 
loper, " shall " ought always to be employed, unless 
good cause be shown against it. 

To illustrate this still further, in speaking of 
another, " I say that he will die" conveys simply 
my impression as to what is going to happen ; but 
" I say that he shall die" would imply a deter- 
mination on my own part, or at least a positive pro- 
phecy founded on foreknowledge of his death. If, 
however, the future sentence, though still in the 
third person, be placed in the mouth or attributed 
to the thoughts of the person whose death is pre- 
dicted, the compulsory sense of " shall " immedi- 
ately disappears, and it becomes a mere auxiliary. 
" He says that he shall die," or " He thinks he shall 
" die," expresses the simple future, whilst " He says 
" he will die " would properly convey an intention 
of killing himself. " Shall " in the first case, in 
the mouth of the person himself, conveys exactly 
the same future sense as would be given by " will " 
in the mouth of another speaking of him. 

Having discussed the practice, let us consider 
how we are to express the general rule which regu- 
lates the choice of " shall " or " will." 

It clearly does not depend entirely on the person 
of the future verb itself, as Lindley Murray's 22 



' 



22 Sixth edition, York, 1834, pp. 145, 147. It should be 
observed that Lindley Murray was by birth and education an 
American, having been born in Pennsylvania in 1745. He prac- 



Chap. I. LINDLEY MUKRAY. 25 

Grammar would lead us to suppose. He observes, 
The following passage is not translated according 
to the distinct and proper meaning of the words 
' shall ' and ' will :' — ' Surely goodness and mercy 
6 shall follow me all the days of my life, and I 
c will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever. 9 
It ought to be ' will follow me/ and ' I shall 
< dwell.' " 

It is not easy to conceive a more unfortunate cri- 
ticism, for in fact neither "shall" nor "will" in 
this sentence are used as simple auxiliaries to ex- 
press the future. " Shall follow me" means "are 
" destined to follow me by the divine ordinance," 
and " will dwell " expresses the intention or volun- 
tary devotion of the speaker. The grammarian 
goes on to say, " In several familiar forms of ex- 
" pression, the word ' shall' still retains its original 
" signification, and does not mean to promise, 
" threaten, or engage, in the third person, but the 
" mere futurition of an event; as, ■ This is as ex- 
" ' traordinary a thing as one shall ever hear of " 
(p. 147). I have some doubts of the correctness of 
this last sentence; but at any rate I conceive that 
" shall" means " as one is destined to hear of/' 23 or 
it may be attributed to the indefinite character of 
the sentence, as will be explained hereafter. 

It is scarcely necessary to observe that a stress, 
or what Dr. Latham calls " a logical accent," on 



tised at the bar at New York till 1784, when he left America 
and settled in England. His death took place in 1826, at the 
age of 81. See Sabine's 'American Loyalists,' 
23 See above, p. 21, 



26 " SHALL " AND " WILL." Chap. I. 

" shall" or " will," often converts them from auxili- 
aries into verbs with a specific meaning of their 
own. When a man says to another "you shall go/ 5 
he means, " I will make you go, whether you like it 
" or not; it is a debt due by you." On the other 
hand, "you will go" means, "you have made up 
" your mind to go, whatever may be the conse- 
" quences." " Will," in this case, would be the 
proper future auxiliary, but the stress makes it in 
fact a different word, though the letters which com- 
pose it are the same. 

I ought to notice another use of "will," in 
addressing a person, which represents a courteous 
form of the imperative. 24 In conveying official 
instructions to a subordinate officer — "you will see 
" that proper precautions are taken," means, in fact, 
" I direct you to see," &c. This is, I conceive, 
simply the use of the future for the imperative ; 
inasmuch as the superior assumes that the party 
addressed will do that which is his duty, and he 
foretells what that will be, instead of ordering him 
to do it. 25 

How then must we state the rules which regulate 
the use of "shall" and "will" as future auxili- 
aries ? We must in the first place confine ourselves 
to the consideration of categorical sentences; and 
speak afterwards of questions, or such propositions as 
may be contingent or hypothetical. It seems, then — 



24 Compare Prof, de Morgan, Trans, of the Philological 
Society, 1850, p. 186, note. 

25 See below, p. 35. For analogous Greek idioms, compare 
MattmVs Greek Gr., s. 498, /3. 



Chap. I. CORRECT USAGE. 27 

1st. Whenever the subject of the future verb is 
the pronoun of the first person, " shall" is the pro- 
per auxiliary. 

2ndly. Whenever the subject of the future verb is 
not the first person, then " shall" is the proper aux- 
iliary only when the future sentence is placed in the 
mouth, or attributed to the thoughts of a person, 
the same as the subject of the future verb, as — " he 
" will go," but—" he thinks that he shall go." 

3rd. " Will" is the proper auxiliary whenever 
the subject of the future verb is in the second or 
third person, and the proposition is not attributed to 
the thoughts or placed in the mouth of such subject 
himself. 

If it be borne in mind that we are speaking of 
the expression of the simple future only, I believe 
that these rules will be found correct. Whenever 
they are departed from, " shall" or " will " ceases 
to be an auxiliary verb properly so called, and 
resumes a shade of its own specific meaning of 
obligation or volition, as the case may be. Thus I 
do not think that " shall " is ever employed in defi- 
nite categorical sentences, whether dependent or 
independent, with the simple neuter pronoun " it " 
for a subject, unless the speaker command or predict 
that a thing must be. Why is this ? Because the 
neuter pronoun cannot be identical with a speaker 
or thinker to whom the sentence is attributed. Yet 
it is not improper to say " Whatever it shall be," or 
" whenever it shall happen." Why is this again? 
Why, by making "it" indefinite, do we cause 
" shall" to resume its rights even with the third 



28 " SHALL " AND " WILL." Chap. I. 

person? The explanation of this point, however, 
is better deferred until we discuss the principle on 
which the general rule is founded. 

In the mean time it is worth while observing that 
a curious illustration of our use of "shall" and 
" will" may be found in the manner in which in 
Latin "se" and "eum" are employed in oblique 
sentences. As a matter of course the analogy is to 
be traced in the third person only, and it amounts 
to no more than the following fact : what may be 
called an oblique first person is expressed in the 
grammatical form of the third, by employing in 
Latin a different pronoun, and in English a different 
future auxiliary. As a general rule, where we use 
" shall " to convey the future in an oblique sen- 
tence, the Eomans would have used the pronoun 
" se ;" and where we prefer " will," they would 
have taken the demonstrative " eum" before the 
infinitive. " Credo eum periturum esse" would 
have to be translated, ." I believe that he will die ; " 
but "credit se periturum esse" must be rendered, 
" he believes that he shall die." The pronoun in 
Latin points out the proper auxiliary in English ; in 
the first case the nominative to " credo" is a differ- 
ent person from the subject to the oblique verb : in 
the second the two are identical. It may be said 
that the following sentence of Caesar is inconsistent 
with what I have stated : 26 " Pollicetur Lucius 
" Piso sese iturum ad Csesarem" would naturally be 
translated into English, " L. Piso promises that he 



26 De Bello Civili, 1. i. c. 3. See App. A. 



Chap. I. EDINBURGH REVIEW. 29 

u will go to Caesar." The fact is, however, that the 
special sense of choice or readiness implied in 
" pollicetur" favours the use of " will," as convey- 
ing the intention of Piso. We may see this in a 
moment, by substituting some neutral word like 
" credit," or " sperat," before the oblique future : 
the English sentence would then probably run, 
" L. Piso believes (or hopes) that he shall go to 
" Caesar." Kow if Piso had been speaking of 
another person, and the pronoun " eum" had been 
employed instead of "sese," then without doubt the 
English sentence would be "Piso believes that he 
" (eum, the other person) will go to Caesar." 
" Shall " would be wholly inadmissible. 

It is desirable, before considering the case of 
hypothetical and interrogative propositions, to dis- 
cuss the feeling or principle in which our use of 
" shall " and " will " originates. 

Many of my readers may know that in 1828 
there appeared in the 'Edinburgh Eeview ' an 
article on '- Jamieson's Scottish Dictionary,' 27 in 
which our English idiom of the future tense was 
discussed. Some quotations from this critical essay, 
and an extract from Archdeacon Hare in reply, will 
form the best introduction to this part of the sub- 
ject, and will in fact supply all that is . necessary. 
The writer in the ' Edinburgh ' says : — 

" Dr. J.'s learned researches have enabled us to 
" throw some light on the great Shibboleth of mo- 
" dern English speech — the peculiar use of the aux- 



27 Vol. xlvii. pp. 492-495. 



30 " SHALL " AND « WILL." Chap. I. 

" iliaries will and shall; by their unskilfulness in 
" which, more perhaps than by any other pecu- 
" liarity, our countrymen are so often bewrayed. 
"It is not, we trust, entirely out of resentment 
" towards this unlearnable system of speaking, that 
" we are induced to say that it is one of the most 
" capricious and inconsistent of all imaginable irre- 
" gularities, and at variance, not less with original 
" etymology than with former usage, and substan- 
" tially with itself. It is not perhaps generally 
" known among the English, who value themselves 
" on this strange anomaly, that it is comparatively 
" of recent introduction, and has not been fully 
" established for so much as two centuries." 

He then observes that " the Gothic language pos- 
" sesses a separate termination to express the future" 
—-a fact which I fear has escaped the later re- 
searches of Grimm, 28 who tells us that language 
has no such tense. The ' Edinburgh' critic pro- 
ceeds to announce as a discovery — " From the pri- 
" mitive meaning of the words shall and will, as 
" they appear in the Gothic and Anglo-Saxon lan- 
" guages, it is quite evident that they respectively 
" signify necessity or moral obligation, and voli- 
" tion." Hence he seems to infer that they cannot 
have beconie auxiliaries, and he goes on to show 
(what no one doubts) that their use was not pre- 
cisely the same in WyclifTe's time, or in Latimer's, 
as it now is. I deny, however (and I shall after- 
wards return to this point), that " in the age of 



28 Deutsche Gramni., b. iv. ss. 139-146. 



Chap. I. ARCHDEACON HARE. 31 

" Wycliffe the future was uniformly expressed by 
" the auxiliary shall" Nor will the reader be pre- 
pared to admit the correctness, either general or 
verbal, of the following conclusion of the argument, 
which is given with the spelling of the reviewer. 

" The truth is, that the English language is des- 
" titute of a mode of expressing simple futurity, 
" either by termination, or auxiliary verbs — such as 
" is expressed, in the former manner, by those 
" European languages which are more immediately 
" derived from the Latin— and, in the latter man- 
" ner, by those of a purer Teutonic origin than ours. 
" Thus the Germans confine their auxiliary verb 
" wollan, to the expression of inclination, desire, 
" wish, &c. ; and sollan, to the expression of sin- 
" cerity, duty ; and they use the auxiliary verb, 
" wordan, when simple futurity is to be expressed." 

On all this Archdeacon Hare remarks : 29 — " Our 
" future, or at least what answers to it, is, I shall, 
" thou wilt, he will. When speaking in the first 
" person, we speak submissively : when speaking of 
" another, we speak courteously." J. Grimm, 30 in 
his ' History of the German Language,' adopts the 
same view of the principle of this idiom. • A man 
has a right to apply to himself the verb which im- 
plies debt or compulsion, but in speaking of others 
it is courteous to abstain from assuming constraint. 
Archdeacon Hare goes on afterwards — 31 



29 Philological Museum, vol. ii. p. 219. 

30 Geschichte der Deutschen Spr., b. ii. s. 908. " Es ist hoflich 
" dass der Eedende von sich ' sollen/ von anderen 'wollen* 
" gebraucht." 

31 Philol. Mus. as above. 



32 " SHALL " AND " WILL." Chap. I. 

"It is rather characteristic that Cobbett, in his 
" c Grammar/ entirely passes over the distinction 
" between shall and will, saying that their uses * are 
" 6 as well known to us all as the uses of our teeth 
" ' and our noses : and to misapply them argues not 
" ' only a deficiency in the reasoning faculties, but 
" i almost a deficiency in instinctive discrimination.' 
" For assuredly there never was a man more ab- 
" horrent from every kind of litotes, which, to 
" judge from the interpretations he gives of such 
" Greek words as he is compelled to make use of, he 
" would probably say meant sheepishness. Nor is 
" Cobbett the only grammarian who tries to cover 
" his evasion of this difficulty by having recourse 
" to a little blustering. Mr. Gilchrist's * gramma- 
" 'tic members of society' do not seem to under- 
" stand much about it : so, after telling us (p. 161) 
" that ' shall is, we believe, merely a diversity of 
" ' will' and talking about the ' perplexity caused 
" 6 by it,' he exclaims that, c if the collective wisdom 
" 'of the grammatic world were deified with legis- 
" ' lative omnipotence, English would in time be 
" ' rendered as invincibly difficult as Greek.' This 
" sentence was perhaps designed as a sample how 
" invincibly easy English might become, were it not 
" for the troublesome shackles of grammar, logic, 
" and sense. A writer in the * Edinburgh Eeview ' 
" (vol. xlvii. p. 492), who has collected a number 
" of instances to show that the ancient usage did not 
" coincide with the modern, and who, if he chose, 
" might collect almost as many to prove that the 
" Athenians, in the time of Demosthenes, did not 



Chap. I. PROFESSOR DE MORGAN. 33 

" talk Homeric Greek, inveighs against c this un- 
" ' learnable system of speaking/ as ' one of the most 
" ' capricious and inconsistent of all imaginary irre- 
" ' gularities :' assuring us, as a Boeotian might 
" have assured Menander, that we ' value ourselves 
" 'ona strange anomaly/ which ' is comparatively 
" 'of recent introduction, and has not been fully 
" ' established for so much as two centuries.' ' ! 

The Archdeacon then proceeds to show that even 
Johnson and Wallis are far from satisfactory, and 
that the true explanation of the idiom seems to be 
indicated by the fact, that in interrogative and de- 
pendent sentences, " when the use of ' shall ' does 
" not convey any appearance of infringing on 
" another's free will, it is still employed in the old 
" way to express futurity." 

Professor de Morgan, 32 however, disputes the cor- 
rectness of this view. He says, " Archdeacon Hare's 
" usus ethicus is taken from the brighter side of 
" human nature : it explains I shall, thou wilt, but 
" I cannot think it explains I will, thou shalt* 
" The present explanation is taken from the darker 
" side, and it is to be feared that the h priori pro- 
" babilities are in its favour. It seems to be the 
"natural disposition of man to think of his own 
" volition in two of the following categories, and of 
" another man's in the other two : 



32 Transactions of Philolog. Society, 1850, p. 186. I do not 
think Dr. Latham happy in calling " shall" promissive with the 
2nd and 3rd persons. This epithet seems rather to belong to 
" will," when used with the 1st person, to profess intention. I 
presume, however, he means that which expresses the simple 
future. 



C 



34 " SHALL " AND " WILL." Chap. I. 

" Compelling, non-compelling; restrained, non- 
" restrained. 

" The ego, with reference to the non-ego, is apt, 
" thinking of himself, to propound the alternative, 
" ' Shall I compel, or shall I leave him to do as he 
" likes?' so that, thinking of the other, the alter- 
'" native is, ' shall he be restrained, or shall he be 
" ' left to his own will? ' Accordingly, the express 
" introduction of his own will is likely to have 
" reference to compulsion, in case of opposition : 
" the express introduction of the will of another is 
" likely to mean no more than the gracious permis- 
" sion of the ego to let non-ego do as he likes. Cor- 
" relatively, the suppression of reference to his own 
" will, and the adoption of a simply predictive form 
" on the part of the ego, is likely to be the mode 
" with which, when the person is changed, he will 
" associate the idea of another having his own way ; 
" while the suppression of reference to the will of 
" the non-ego is likely to infer restraint produced by 
" the predominant will of the ego. 

" Occasionally, the will of the non-ego is referred 
" to as under restraint in modern times. To I will 
" not, the answer is sometimes you shall, meaning, 
" in spite of the will — sometimes you will, meaning 
" that the will will be changed by fear or sense of 
" the inutility of resistance. 

" Of the strength of the objection to be derived 
" from the departures from the rule made by the 
" Scots and Irish, the author does not feel able to 
" judge. 

" It often happens that you will, with a persua- 



Chap. I. OBJECTIONS TO DE MORGAN'S THEORY. 35 

" sive tone, is used courteously for something next 
" to, if not quite, you shall" 

I have already adverted 33 to the question how 
far grammar is concerned with the employment of 
" shall" or " will," and to the imperative use of the 
future ; nor am I sure that I fully comprehend the 
general theory on which Professor de Morgan rests 
his objections to Archdeacon Hare's remarks. So 
far as I understand it, I differ from the former and 
agree with the latter. 

In the first place, I do not attach much value to 
the consideration that a certain idiom in language 
is based on " the brighter side of human nature." 
Conventional forms of speech are current enough 
in all tongues, and courteous phrases are consistent 
with uncourteous acts. The red Indian wore the 
scalping-knife, and called every man " brother;" and 
where human nature fails is not in words. Surely, 
if kind speech does not prove kind feeling, we are 
hardly safe in assuming that, because men are 
naturally depraved, therefore we cannot assign a 
courteous and kindly origin to a conventional ex- 
pression. At any rate the darkest view of human 
nature may be reconciled with Archdeacon Hare's 
theory by calling the feeling to which the use of 
" shall" and " will" is due, " hypocrisy," instead of 
" courtesy." 

But, whilst I place little reliance on inferences 
of this kind, either one way or the other, I cannot 
but think that the direct evidence is strongly adverse 
to Professor de Morgan. 



33 See above, pp. 9, 26. 

G 2 



36 " SHALL " AND " WILL." Chap. I. 

" Shall," as we shall hereafter see, means origin- 
ally " to owe :" how, then, is it likely that its use 
with the first person was founded on an implied 
assertion of superior power in the speaker, and thus 
based " on the darker side of human nature " ? 
" To owe" is no doubt closely connected with the 
notion of compulsion, but then it is with the passive 
side of compulsion; it applies to the party com- 
pelled, not the party compelling. Had "shall" 
originally signified the right or act of enforcing the 
payment of a debt — not the duty consequent on 
such a right — it might be plausible to suppose that 
its use with the first person was intended to imply 
command or superiority on the part of the speaker. 
Surely, however, to allude to the notion of owing 
by means of a word which is properly applicable only 
to the debtor can hardly bear such a construction. 

Again, why should the express mention of the 
will of another with the second and third persons be 
taken to imply an assumption of control over that 
will? Such a theory may indeed be well said to 
suit the darker view of human nature, since it im- 
plies perpetual irony. 

Moreover, Professor de Morgan's explanation does 
not to me clear up the peculiar phenomena of the 
variable application of " shall " and " will," as shown 
in dependent sentences, or the return to " shall " in 
interrogative and hypothetical forms. The Professor 
says that Archdeacon Hare's view explains " I shall," 
" thou wilt," but does not explain " I will " " thou 
shalt." The answer, as the reader will have seen, 
is, that in the two latter cases the verbs are not 



Chap. I. HYPOTHETICAL SENTENCES. 37 

mere auxiliaries, meant to convey the simple future; 
they express, according to their original sense, 
volition and duty. 

If we now turn to sentences which assert hypo- 
thetically or contingently and to interrogations, our 
argument will be much strengthened. It will appear, 
I think, that " shall " was the original future auxi- 
liary, and has still the presumption in its favour ; 
since it is supplanted by "will" only in special 
cases, and originally from a sense of courtesy or sub- 
mission in speaking of others. It is most remarkable 
that whilst " shall " and " should," applied to the 
second or third person in categorical propositions, 
such as " you should go," or " he shall feel it," can 
express in English nothing but compulsion, duty, or 
destiny, yet a single drop of hypothesis, such as 
may be infused by an indefinite adverb or relative, 
will neutralize the stringent imperative sense, and 
restore "shall" or "should" to the condition of 
mere future auxiliaries. " If you should go," or 
" whenever he shall feel it," are the natural forms of 
our contingent future. 

Burke says, " All nations will fly from so dan- 
" gerous a connection, lest, instead of being partakers 
" of our strength, they should only become sharers 
" of our ruin." 34 Should is the proper auxiliary 
here, but a causal conjunction, such as "because," 
requires " would " — " because they would become 
" sharers of our ruin" — unless, indeed, we changed 
the form by inserting some verb which attributed 



34 Observations on a late State of the Nation. 



38 " SHALL " AND " WILL." Chap. I. 

the thought to the subject of the future, as " because 
" they fear they should be partakers in our ruin." 
It is the conjunction "lest" (ne) in the original 
sentence which gives a contingent sense to the 
apodosis, and justifies the retention of " shall." 

In the following well-known sentence of Burke's 35 
the use of "will" as a mere future auxiliary is per- 
haps questionable. Speaking of convocation he 
says, " It is, however, a part of the constitution, and 
" may be called into act and energy whenever there 
" is occasion, and whenever those who conjure up 
" that spirit will choose to abide the consequences." 
Now, I think, after whenever, " shall" was the natural 
auxiliary ; but it is probable that the writer's feeling 
was that of strengthening the notion of volition 
expressed by " choose :" " will" is, in fact, a sort of 
surplusage, 35a and it is clear that the future sense 
was not prominent in the author's mind by the use 
of "is " instead of " shall be " in the first member 
of the sentence, "whenever there is occasion." 

On the other hand, the following passage of the 
same author shows how the mere fact that the pre- 
cise subject of the verb and the time of action are 
left indefinite, justifies the retention of " shall." 
" How heavy their punishment will be who shall 
" at any time dare to resist," &c. 

Every one will feel that if Burke had been 
speaking of a definite case of resistance he would 



35 ' Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol.' In referring to Burke, I 
do not venture to recollect that he was Irish. The reader must 
attribute what he pleases to this fact ; something may be due to it. 

35a rpj^g j g -j.]^ explanation of "I will predict," p. 10. 



Chap. I. CONSTRUCTION WITH " WHEN." 39 

have used " will ;" e. g. " there are the men who 
" will dare to resist," &c. So the exhortation in 
the Communion Service speaks of " all such as shall 
be religiously and devoutly disposed ;" nor is this 
because " will " was not currently employed at the 
time. In the next exhortation we have " These 
" things if ye earnestly consider, ye will by God's 
" grace return to a better mind, for the obtaining 
" of which we shall not cease," &c. 36 It is espe- 
cially remarkable as illustrating the change in our 
idiom, that in the second Prayer Book of Edward 
VI. (1552), and in the book of 1559, this last sen- 
tence runs, " ye shall by God's grace return," &c. 

The ordinary construction with " when " implies 
the same principle. I think it will be found that if 
" when " represents the simple relative " at which 
" time," then " will " is the proper auxiliary. " I 
■" will be there at six o'clock, when it will be 
" light." A definite time is named, and the latter 
part of the sentence is a simple assertion of the 
future. On the other hand we should say, " I will 
" be there when it shall be deemed requisite," 
because " when " stands for " whenever," or " at 
" such time as," no definite time having been pre- 
viously fixed. 

In interrogative sentences, again, the practice 
seems to be such as goes to confirm the views 
already expressed. In these, as in categorical pro- 



86 I believe that tlie first of these exhortations appears in its 
present form only in the Liturgy of 1662. The second is sub- 
stantially to be found in the second book of Edward VI. and in 
that of Elizabeth (1559). 



40 " SHALL " AND " WILL." Chap. I. 

positions, the first person always requires "shall;" 
no cause can be shown in such cases for depriving 
the original future auxiliary of its rights. But with 
this exception the interrogative appears to employ 
the auxiliary, which, according to the rules already 
laid down, may be presumed to be adapted to the 
answer. Nor is this extraordinary : an interrogative 
pronoun or adverb of time and place has been well 
described as " a relative which is looking for an ante- 
cedent." Hence in most languages the forms of the 
two are all but identical. As a relative preserves 
the number and person of the antecedent, so the 
interrogative pronoun anticipates the person and 
the auxiliary which will probably belong to the 
respondent. In the first person, however, " shall " 
retains its place, although the answer must be 
made by " will." For instance, if I ask " How 
" shall I like such a poem?" the answer made by 
another person who has read it must clearly express 
the simple future, and would be " You will (or will 
" not) like it very much." If a man asks his 
medical attendant "Shall I have a return of my 
" ague to-day?" the answer would be "You will" 
or " will not :" unless, indeed, the physician assumed 
the responsibility of commanding the disease, not 
of predicting the result. If, however, the patient 
inquired " Shall I have my pills by six o'clock?" 
the reply might properly be " You shall," simply 
because the sending depends on the action of the 
answerer, and the sentence conveys more than the 
pure future. In all these cases the question is put 
by means of " shall," whether the answer is to be 



Chap. I. OLD BALLADS. 41 

made by one auxiliary or the other, because the 
verb in such question is in the first person. Ac- 
cordingly, in the Scotch ballad of Sir Patrick Spens, 
the king asks — 

" where ivill I get me a skeilly skipper 
" To sail this ship of mine ? " 

— the Scotch idiom permitting the use of will with 
the first person in the answer. 

On the other hand, the distinction is observed in 
Percy's version of the Battle of Otterburne, which 
the editor attributes to an early date : — 

" Where schall I byde the ? said the Dowglas, 
" Or where wylte thou come to me ? " 

So again — 

" Ther schall I byde the, sayd the Dowglas, 

"By the fayth of my bodye ; 
" Thether schall I come, said Syr Harry Percy, 

" My troth I plyght to the." 

Now, it seems to me that in the second person a 
question which relates to one to whom it is addressed 
may, in like manner, be expressed by " shall," 
because such person, in answering, will employ 
the first person, and, consequently, use this auxili- 
ary. There is nothing uncourteous in " Shall you 
" go to London to-morrow ?" the answer would 
probably be, "I shall," or "I shall not." "Will 
" you go to London to-morrow?" though admissible, 
seems to suppose that your mind is not yet made 
up. As has been already observed, the difference 
between these two forms may be readily tested by 
prefixing either of them to a verb which admits 



42 "SHALL" AND "WILL." Chap, I. 

futurity but excludes volition. "When shall you 
" have the gout?" cannot well be answered by 
" I will," &c, and, consequently, the interrogation 
cannot properly be put in the form w When will 
" you have the gout?" as if it were a matter of 
choice. Cases, however, of a doubtful character 
might perhaps be easily suggested with regard to 
the second person. 

But in questions affecting the third person, that 
is to say, a person different from the speaker or 
from him who is addressed, the matter is clearer ; 
in these the question must be put by means of the 
auxiliary " will," inasmuch as it cannot, consistently 
with the rules which we are now discussing, be 
answered by " shall," unless it is intended to convey 
something more than the pare future. " When 
"will he come?" or "When will they come?" 
must be replied to by means of " will," unless com- 
pulsion or destiny be signified. " He shall come " 
would imply a power in the speaker, or something 
equivalent to it. 

It appears to me that all these instances of the 
use of " shall " and " will " in contingent sen- 
tences and in questions confirms very strongly the 
explanation of the principle given by Archdeacon 
Hare, and are consistent with no other theory. 

" Shall " was the original auxiliary appropriated 
to the future in English, as it is in the Dutch and 
Low German dialects; it is never superseded by 
" will " where any loophole exists for avoiding an 
implied want of courtesy in its use. If, in a 
question, the person addressed has to answer by 



Chap. I. THE BIBLE. 43 

" shall," or if the sentence is hypothetical or in- 
definite, then " shall " retains its right even with 
the second and third persons. In all other cases it 
is not considered safe to employ the compulsory 
auxiliary when speaking of another. 

Such I believe to be the present usage of " shall " 
in the English language, and the theory on which 
it is founded. 

It remains to say something of the manner in 
which this rule has grown up until it has assumed 
its present form. It is scarcely necessary to return 
to the singular argument of the Edinburgh Ee- 
viewer of 1828, 37 who would infer that, because 
it must have so grown up, it does not now exist. 

Agreeing in the main, as I do, with Archdeacon 
Hare, 38 I still think he has used expressions which 
imply that the origin of this idiom was more recent 
than the facts warrant. He says, " In our older 
" writers, for instance in our translation of the 
" Bible, shall is applied to all three persons; we 
" had not then reacht that stage of politeness 
" which shrinks from the appearance even of speak- 
" ing compulsorily of another." 

lam far from asserting that " shall" is not used 
in the authorised version of the Bible with the second 
and third persons where we should now employ 
" will " for the expression of the pure future ; many 
of the passages, however, which at first sight appear 
to show this usage, admit of explanation, by a re- 
ference to the principle of ordinance or decree by a 



37 See above, p. 31. 

38 Philological Museum, as above, vol. ii. p. 219. 



44 " SHALL" AND "WILL." Chap. I. 

Supreme Being or the prediction of the destined 
course of Providence. One thing is, I think, clear : 
the application of " will," according to the ordinary- 
modern idiom, was thoroughly understood, though 
it might be more sparingly employed. One instance 
is sufficient to prove that the usage was known: 
" For there is hope of a tree, if it be cut down, that 
" it will sprout again, and that the tender branch 
" thereof will not cease." — Job xiv. 7. In ch. ix. 
ver. 27 of the same book " will " is used with the 
first person as we might now use it, to express a 
purpose : " If I say I will forget my complaint, I 
" will leave off my heaviness and comfort myself." 

But we shall see still more clearly how far " will " 
had established itself in the language before the 
authorised version of the Scriptures was made, if we 
compare a few passages as translated by Wycliffe, 
and as they appear in our Bible and Liturgy. The 
words of Psalm lviii. 16 are in the Vulgate " con- 
" vertentur ad vesperam et famem patientur ut 
" canes et circuibunt civitatem." Wycliffe trans- 
lates this by " shul" or " schal." The structure of 
this verse in the Bible version is wholly different, 
but in our Prayer Book it stands, " They will return, 
" grin like a dog, and go about the city." The 
" shall " of Wycliffe may be attributed to the pro- 
phetic character of this passage, but such an ex- 
planation will hardly apply to Mark xii. 6 : " Quia 
reverebuntur filium meum," IvrpocTiriGovroci tov vlov 
tAov. The authorised version is, " They will re- 
" verence my son." In the Oxford text of Wycliffe 
the passage runs, " Perad venture they schulen drede 



Chap. I. THE BIBLE. 45 

" my sone." Bagster's edition of WyclifiVs version 
and the various readings of the Oxford reprint give 
" wolen " and " wolden," as if the propriety of sub- 
stituting " will " for "shall" in such a case were 
beginning to be felt. 

The contrast between the earlier and later use of 
the auxiliaries is well seen in the 9th verse of the 
same chapter, though the passage admits of the sense 
of authoritative denunciation on the part of Christ, 
or volition on that of the master of the vineyard. 
In Wycliffe' s version the question " What schal the 
" Lord of the vineyard doe ?" is answered by 
" schal." In the authorised version the question is 
asked by " shall," but answered by " will," and it 
is the same in the Kheims, Geneva, and Tyndale's 
translations. Cranmer renders both question and 
answer by " shall." In the passage of St. Paul, 
" All things are lawful for me, but I will not be 
" brought under the power of any " (1 Cor. vi. 12), 
the Greek future, i£oi/<Tia0-9*i<rojma*, is expressed in 
the English Testament by " will," as conveying the 
purpose or intention of the Apostle. The Vulgate 
is, " sub nullius redigar potestate." Our version 
therefore in this, as in other cases, is more definite 
than the original. Wycliffe translates the simple 
future of the Vulgate by the proper auxiliary, 
" schal," but Tyndale, Cranmer, the Eheims, and 
the Geneva versions all agree with our own. In 
the same manner the declaration of Christ in Mark 
xiv. 25, "I will drink no more of this fruit of the 
" vine " (jam non bibam), implies intention in our 
translation, whilst Wycliffe adheres to the future 



46 " SHALL " AND " WILL." Chap. I. 

" schall." 39 These examples are not given as being 
all instances of the simple future, but they go to 
show the manner in which Wycliffe employed 
" schall" where later translators have preferred 
" will." 

But I think it may be satisfactorily shown that 
WyclifTe's contemporary, Chaucer, constantly em- 
ployed " shall " and " will " according to the modern 
idiom. I do not assert that no exceptions occur, or 
that Chaucer's usage was the same as ours: my 
object is only to establish the affirmative proposition 
— the present English idiom of these auxiliary verbs 
was familiar to the father of English poetry ; conse- 
quently, we must assume that the principle on 
which such usage rests had been already felt and 
acted on. 

" Wil" or "wol" is constantly employed, as it 
is with us, to express intention of the speaker. 
Thus, in the prologue to the ' Canterbury Tales,' 40 — 

" And at a knight than wol I firste beginne." — L. 42. 
" I wol myselven gladly with you ride." — L. 805. 

In the « Knight's Tale' (1. 1589) we have — 
" I wol be ded or elles thou shalt die." 

where " wol " marks the determined will of the 
speaker, and " shalt" the certainty of the alter- 
native. 



i 



39 Compare verses 27, 31, 58 of the same chapter in both 
versions. 

40 Compare lines 811, 891, 1336, 1338, 1355, 1397, 1452, 1490, 
1591, 2253, 2255, 3129, 3143, 4131, 4248 for similar instances. 
The references here and elsewhere are made to Tyrrwhitt's Cant. 
Tales, Pickering, 1830. 



Chap. I. CHAUCER. 47 

On the other hand, Chaucer uses " shall" for the 
future of the first person, just as we should now do 
in modern English : — 

" To love my lady, whom I love and serve, 
" And ever shal, till that mine herte sterve." — Knight's 
Tale, 1. 1145. 

" And eke it is not likely all thy life 

" To stonden in hire grace, no more shal I." — Ibid. 1. 1173. 

" In swiche a gise as I yon tellen shall." — Ibid. 1. 1210. 

" I shal do diligence,"— xUd. 1. 2472." 

Again, the following lines appear to exhibit " wol " 
with the second and third persons, in conformity 
with our present idiom : 42 — 

" Than wol I clepe, how Alison ! how John ! 
" Be mery : for the flood wol passe anon, 
" And thou wolt sain, Haile Maister Xicholay.'' — Miller's 
Tale, 1. 3577. 

Palamon, describing the effects of Emilie's charms, 
says, — 

" But I was hurt right now throughout min eye 
" Into min herte, that wol my bane be." — Knighfs Tale, 
1. 1099. 

Again, — 

" Palamon, 
" That serveth you and wol don all his life." — 1. 2797. 

So in the c Eeve's Tale,' — 

" Our manciple, I hope he wol be ded." — L. 4027. 

" Our corn is stolen, men wol us fonnes call." — L. 4027. 



41 Compare lines 765, 1061, 1185, 1398, 1846, 1866, 2325, 
3170, 3511, 3533, 3561, 3675, 3680, 3744, 3780, 4083, 5000, 
4206. 

42 Compare lines 1158, 1546, 2323, 3527, 3718. 



4 8 "SHALL" AND "WILL." Clup , 

;' This Arcite full proudly spake again,- 
L n Tbou shalt, quod he, he rather tt^^^ ^ 

; s And he hegan with right a mery chere 
H, tale anon, and said as ye shul here.»-P, 0%Me , ,. 859 

I. S^^ ^ t6 Shal WS ™* ^'-Kn^s Tah> 

" ^swo^ *" ^^ ""' «* tL °^ *he world had 
"The contrary of a thing hy ya or nay, 
Yet somefme it shall fallen on a da^-JW* L 1670 <3 
The line, 

" Though Mars shal help his knight, yet natheles— » 

belongs to the class of hypothetical or continent 



43 Compare lines 1147, 3779 41 10 t+ i, u 
me by a friend that «,i i l 11 h&S been su ^sted to 

is worth quoting-- ^^ W 6 in Go ^s Florent 

ff Florent,ifIforthee S oshape 

"« T h ?^° U thr0Ugl1 me th ^ dea *h escape, 
^ And take worship of thy deed, 

" Wnat snail I have to my meed? 

w What thing, quod he, that thou wilte, axe." 

Ellis's Specimens, vol. i. p , 137 

It appears to me, however, that the -wilte" W \ 

auxiliarv ( <nw" ,•«, +i» • ,. nere is no 

"wilt^ T h J imperative --ask what thing thou 

wilt. I have according v inspW-Prl o „ • , 

before -axe." J inserted a comma m the text 



Chap. I. CHAUCER. 49 

The following passage from ' The Man of Lawe's 
Tale ' affords numerous instances of " shall " with 
different persons : — 

" And she hath this emprise ytaken in hond, 
" Which ye shull her en that I shal devise, 
" And to hem all she spake right in this wise." 



" We shnl first feine us Cristendom to take, 
" Cold water shal not greve us but a lite ; 

" And I shal swiche a feste and revel make, 

" That, as I trow, I shal the soudan quite." — L. 4678. 

The only "shall" in these lines which may appear 
contrary to modern usage is that in italics in the 
fifth. The plural " shall " in the fourth expresses 
the course decided on, and is joined, moreover, with 
the first person: "will" would convey the notion 
of making up one's mind at the time, and imply 
intention rather than authoritative determination. 
Even the " shall " in the fifth may mean " is not 
" destined to hurt us — is sure not to hurt us," and 
thus express more than the simple future. 43 a 

Now all these passages from Chaucer, to which 
many others might be added, make it, I think, clear 
that our modern usage of " shall " and " will " is not 
quite of such recent origin as the Edinburgh Ee- 
viewer, or even Archdeacon Hare, would lead us to 
suppose. Wycliffe no doubt usually employed 
" shall " in translating the future, but his contem- 
porary was evidently conversant with the modern 
idiom. Exceptions, as I have said, can be found, 
but such instances, how T ever numerous, cannot de- 
stroy the affirmative inference which we are author- 
43 a See above, p. 21. 

D 



50 " SHALL " AND « WILL." Chap. I. 

ised to draw from the examples quoted. The dis- 
tinction between " shall " and " will " was under- 
stood and recognised in English long before the 
authorised version of the Bible was made. This 
inference will be strengthened if we turn to letters 
of the time of Henry IV. and Henry V., published 
by Sir Henry Ellis. 

Jankyn Harrard, constable of Dynevor, writing 
with reference to Owen Grlendower's rebellion, says, 
" For thai han ymad har avow that thei well al 
" gat have owss dede th'rn. Wher for I prei zow 
" that ze nul not bugil ous, that ze send to ous 
" warning whether schull we have eny help or 
" no." 44 That is to say, " For they have made their 
" vow that they will anywise have us dead therein. 
" Wherefore I pray you that you will not trouble 
" (boggle, or beguile?) us; that you will send us 
" warning within short time whether we shall have 
" any help or not." 

It is possible that the " will " may, in one or two 
of these instances, imply volition or determination ; 
" shall " is employed with the first person, and there 
is nothing in the passage conflicting with modern 
usage. In the following example "will" occurs 
with the neuter pronoun of the third person, " and 
" zif it be tariet til sumyr hit wil not be so 
"lightly." 45 So again, "youre shippe wolle not 
" be redy." 46 



44 Ellis's Letters, second series, vol. i. letter iv. p. 15. 

45 Letter of Reginald de Bayldon. Ellis's Letters, first series, 
vol. i. p. 36. 

46 lb, vol. i. p. 69. 



Chap. I. LORD BERNERS. 51 

In John Skydniores letter 47 to Fairford, the 
Eeceiver at Brecknock, he says, " Wherfore wryteth 
" to Sir Hugh Waterton, and to all thilke that ye 
" suppose wol take this mater to hert." 

The Bishop of Durham addressing Henry V. tells 
the King — " Als sone as I may more do ye shall 
" have wityng therof ;" 48 just as we should now 
say, " as soon as I am able to do more you shall 
" know it;" the act of giving the knowledge being 
in the power of the speaker, and therefore not within 
the principle which obliges us to use " will " with 
the second person. 

It may be worth while to trace the usage of these 
auxiliaries a little further down in the history of 
the language. 

The following passages are from Lord Bemers' 
Froissart.' 49 — " Now I shall she we you what auns- 
6 were the King had of his counsayle." — " I shall 
8 do accordyng to your advise." — " And he thought 
' in hymselfe he wold agree therto." — "Than the 
' Bysshop of Burgos, Chauncellor of Spayne, who 
' was well langaged, sayd, ( Sirs, ye knyghtes of 
' ' Englad perteyning to the Duke of Lacaster, and 
' ' sent hyder fro his constable, understande that 
6 ' the Kyng here of his pytie and gentylnesse wyll 
' '* shewe to his enemy es all the grace he maye ; 
6 ' and, Sirs, ye shall retourne to your constable, 
' ' and shew him fro the Kyng of Castyle that he 
' ' shall make it to be knowen through al his hoost 
6 ' by the sowne of a trumpet, that his realme shal 



47 lb. letter vii. p. 20. 48 lb. letter xvii. p. 52, 

49 Edition of LSI 2, 4to. vol. ii. pp. 304, 305. 

D 2 



52 "SHALL" AND "WILL." Chap. I. 

" * be open and redy to reicyve all the Englysshmen 
ci ' hole or sicke.' — These knightes thanked the 
" Kynge and his counsayle of their aunswere, and 
" said, ' Sir, there be certayne artycles in your 
" 6 aunswere, we can nat tell if they will be ac- 
" 6 cepted or nat; if they be nat we shall send 
" c agayne to you our heraulte : if he come nat we 
" ' shall accept your saying.' " 

Now here the first " wyll " may be explained by 
supposing it to express the intention of the king ; 
but the last is clearly the simple future employed in 
the passive with the third person. " Shall" in 
several cases implies power or control ; in the others 
it is used with the first person as it is now. 

Latimer 5U in his sermons constantly uses, " But 
" ye will say ;" anticipating, as it were, an objection 
on the part of his hearers. One such sentence as 
the following is sufficient to show that he was 
familiar with the use of " will " as the simple future 
auxiliary in the third person. " Then do you deck 
" the very true temple of God, and honour him in 
" rich vestures that will never be worn, and so forth 
" use yourselves according unto the commandments ; 
" and then finally set up your candles, and they will 
" report what a glorious light remaineth in your 
" hearts." 51 

Again, in the same sermon — " Offer your obla- 
" tions and prayers to our Lord Jesus Christ, who 
" will both hear and accept them." 



50 See Latimer's Third, Fourth, and Sixth Sermons before 
Edward VI., and compare the ' Second Sermon on the Card.' 

51 Second Sermon on the Card (ad pi.). 



Chap. I. LATIMER. 53 

On the other hand " shall " is employed to signify 
destiny, or the decree of God; as, "I say such men 
" shall go to hell for so doing." 52 

I think that I may close this chapter by asserting 
confidently that the use of " shall " and " will " 
according to the modern idiom has been familiar to 
English authors from the time of Chaucer down- 
wards. On the other hand, I do not assert that the 
nice distinction between these forms was uniformly 
or accurately observed by all our writers during 
these centuries. I do not assert that the practice 
now established by the example of our best authors 
and the usage of cultivated conversation can be con- 
sidered as settled until modern times. The differ- 
ence, however, was recognised, and the idiom grew 
and strengthened until it has become part and parcel 
of the English language, capable of being embodied 
in a rule of grammar, and founded on a clear and 
definite principle. 



52 First Sermon on the Card. 



54 "SHALL" AND "WILL." Chap. II. 



CHAPTEE II. 

Any discussion of the English auxiliaries " shall " 
and "will" is incomplete without some notice of 
the corresponding idioms in other languages ; more 
especially in those of the same family as our own. 
The original signification too of our own future 
auxiliaries must necessarily be traced out, and even 
a cursory glance that way suggests many questions 
of deep interest which, unfortunately, would demand 
for their satisfactory solution philological attainments 
of a very high order. In this chapter I attempt no 
more than what may serve to point in the right 
direction, and I claim no merit whatever on the 
score of originality. 

Whether it be that our thoughts are not easily 
directed to the future 53 because the present is too 
absorbing, or that there is "an awful, irrepressible, 
" and almost instinctive consciousness of the uncer- 
" tainty of the future which makes men avoid the 
" appearance of speaking presumptuously of it" — 
the fact is certain — the want of a future tense as an 
organic part of the conjugation of verbs is a common 
defect in many modern languages. 

In all those of the Teutonic stock this defect 
appears inherent. Dr. Prichard 54 says', "It has 



53 Archdeacon Hare. Philolog. Museum, vol. ii. p. 218. 

54 Eastern Origin of the Celtic Nations, ch. vii. p. 107. Com- 
pare p. 175. 



Chap. II. GERMAN FUTURE. 55 

" been observed that .the Teutonic verbs have one 
" form for the future and the present tense. The 
" same remark applies to the Welsh ; for the Welsh 
" language, except in the instance of the verb sub- 
" stantive, 55 which has two distinct forms, one for 
" the present and the other for the future tense, has 
" only one modification of the verb, which is used 
" to represent both. In the German dialects the 
" single form above referred to is properly a present 
" tense, but the Welsh grammarians consider that 
" their language has only a future, and say that the 
" future is put for the present." 

Grimm states the case as follows: — "Our lan- 
" guage in all its branches has the power of express- 
" ing only two tenses of the verb — the present and 
" the past. In this it differs remarkably from all 
" the languages originally allied to it, which are 
" provided with abundant means for expressing the 
" relations of time. On the contrary, the German 
" approaches to the simplicity of the Hebrew and 
" other tongues which are capable of denoting only 
" the future and the praeterite. Thus, in our older 
" dialects, the identity of the future and the present 
" is shown by the fact that the latter tense serves 
" for the former, although, as an exception, the 
" Anglo-Saxon appropriated a particular root of the 
" verb-substantive, eom, to the present as distin- 
" guished from the future form, beo. The same 
" peculiar relation is seen in the case of the Lithu- 



55 lb. pp. 173, 175. Compare Davies' Antique Lingupe Britt. 
Rudimenta, Oxon. 1809, p. 92; Zeuss. Grammatica Celtica, Lip- 
sise, 1853, vol. i. pp. 482, 527, 539. 



56 " SHALL " AND " WILL." Chap. II. 

" anian ' esmi,' 'sum/ and 'busu, ero;' the Scla- 
" vonian f jesm ? and 'budu;' and the Irish 'taim ? 
" and < biad.' " 56 

Ulfilas constantly uses the present indicative for 
the future, and the practice continued in the old 
High-German. 57 There are instances of the same 
kind in the middle High-German, and even in the 
modern language, but then the verb is commonly 
accompanied by some adverb implying or expressing 
future time, as, ich komme morgen, or, ich komme 
bald: such sentences would no doubt require " veni- 
am" or "viendrai" in Latin or French. A similar 
idiom is said to exist in Swedish, 58 and in English 
we not unfrequently say, " I am going to London 
to-morrow." In the Gothic the present subjunctive 
also lends its aid in expressing futurity, as the opta- 
tive with av may do in Greek. Ulfilas applies this 
form in such cases as the following : " haitais," xa\s- 
asis — "Thou shalt call his name John" (Luke i. 
13) ; " bidjau," hqwho-c*) (John xvi. 26) ; but its 
use does not appear to have extended to other dia- 
lects besides the Moeso-Gothic. Grimm observes truly 
enough that the close relation between the future tense 
and the subjunctive mood is sufficiently shown by the 
analogy of their forms in the Latin conjugation. 



56 Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache, b. ii. s. 842. Compare 
Deutsche Grammatik, b. i. s. 1051; b. iv. ss. 139, 176; Latham's 
English Language, p. 321; Thorpe's translation of Eask's Anglo- 
Saxon Gr. p. 84. See App. B. 

5 7 Grimm, Deutsche Gramm. b. iv. s. 176. Compare Bopp, 
Comp. Gramm. Transl. p. 888. 

58 Grimm gives an example, Deutsche Gramm. b. iv. s. 177, 
n. 1. 



Chap. II. THE BASQUE AUXILIARY. 57 

Ulfilas evades the difficulty with regard to the 
verb-substantive by sometimes using the tenses of 
" vairthan, 59 fio," the verb corresponding to werden, 
which plays so distinguished a part as an auxiliary 
in modern German. 

According to Adelung, 60 the Magyar, as well as 
the Finn and the Esthonian, have no future properly 
so called, but employ the present instead. From the 
following extract from M. von Humboldt's Appendix 
to the Mithridates 61 I infer that the Basque forms 
its future by means of the auxiliary and a participle ; 
in such a manner, however, that the future force 
depends upon the participle employed, as it may be 
said to do in " sum facturus " or " habeo faciendum." 

" The tenses," Humboldt says, " are expressed by 
" means of the auxiliary and the participle of the 
" verb. The auxiliary has two tenses ; one com- 
" plete in itself, and the other incomplete, or imply- 
" ing continuance, which can be employed for the 
" present, prseterite, and future respectively. These 
" three last distinctions of time are marked by the 
" participle, which accordingly is threefold, and all 
" tenses are thus compounded without difficulty. 
" The two tenses of the auxiliary with the present 
" participle express the present or imperfect, with 
" the past participle the perfect or pluperfect, and 
" so on." 



59 Thus in Matthew viii. 12, "There shall be weeping and 
gnashing of teeth," sVt«* is translated by vairthith, fit. Compare 
Grirnin, Deutsche Gramm. b. iv. s. 177, Bopp, p. 888. 

60 Mithridates (Vater), 1809, b. ii. s. 774, n. 

61 Tb. b. iv. s. 332. 



58 " SHALL " AND "WILL.*' Chap. II. 

It thus seems that in very many languages, in- 
cluding all those of the Teutonic stock, a proper 
future tense is wanting. It is still more remarkable 
that those modern tongues which are based on Greek 
and Latin were unable to retain the regular inflec- 
tion of future forms with which the classical lan- 
guages were so well provided ; yet, as we shall see, 
many of them had no sooner lost their regular 
future, than they set themselves to work, with almost 
perfect uniformity of principle, to reconstruct, by 
means of an auxiliary, another inflected future, 
which they made part of themselves, and have che- 
rished as one of their established tenses. 

The German tongues and the modern Greek, on 
the other hand, do not appear to have organised any 
such inflection of the verb, but they have continued 
to supply the place of the future by auxiliaries of 
various kinds. The principle on which such auxili- 
aries have been selected is obvious enough. Some 
one of the states or conditions which usually precede 
an action or an event is predicated of the subject of 
the sentence, and the action or event itself is thus 
left to be inferred. When a man " has a thing to 
" do," it may be supposed that he will do it; when 
he " wills" or " intends" a thing, or " is obliged" 
to do it, or is actually about it, we may conclude that 
the act itself will probably follow.* Accordingly, in 
those languages which do not possess a future, some 
one of these preliminary conditions is asserted by 
means of a verb, which ultimately strips off its own 
special sense, is converted into an auxiliary, and 
becomes as it were a mere sign of time. As Mr. 



Chap. II. GRIMM: " HABAX." 59 

Francis Newman says, " It is historically clear that 
" the words ' will/ ' shall/ ' have/ < let/ ' going/ 
" c may/ pass into auxiliaries by the process of 
" losing or modifying a part of their signification, 
" generally so as to become less emphatic." 62 

Thus it is that words signifying choice or volition 
are applied indifferently to agents, things, or events ; 
and, as the reader will have seen, one of the great 
sources of difficulty in the use of " shall " and 
" will " is the fact that these two verbs have not 
entirely got rid of their own special meaning. They 
are sometimes employed as mere auxiliaries, whilst 
at other times their original sense thrusts itself 
forward, and must be considered in their application. 
Occasionally it is difficult to determine whether 
they are simple auxiliaries or not ; nor can this am- 
biguity surprise us when we reflect that the reason 
why they pass into auxiliaries at all is because their 
own special meaning fits them for such service. 

In discussing these verbs, Grimm begins with 
" haban." 63 He observes that in the passage, o^l 
ttoicj K'xi Troiyvco (2 Cor. xi. 12), Ulfilas translates the 
future by " taujan haba/' using the simple infinitive 
with the verb "have;" whereas the old High Ger- 
man generally interposes the preposition " ze " or 
"zi," as we now place "to" in English between 
the auxiliary verb and the infinitive, or as £jot& 



62 Classical Museum, Xo. xxv. p. 254. 

63 Deutsche Gramm. b. iv. ss. 93, 108, 178. So in John vi. 6. 
Ulfilas translates the Greek t! 'ipzXXz <ron7v, by "thatci habaida 
taujan." Zahn (note ad I. and Gramm. s. 51) points out that 
he usually employed munan to represent the original pixxav. 



60 " SHALL" AND "WILL." Chap. II. 

is sometimes used in Greek. It is by no means 
clear, however, that in this and similar cases the 
notion of duty or compulsion is not present. St. 
Paul might desire to express intention, as is done 
by our English version, or he might wish to convey 
the idea of duty ; as in middle High German, " Nu 
" habet ju ze raten" means "Nun rathet, nun 
" mogt — nun sollt ihr rathen " — " deliberandum est 
"vobis" — rather than the pure future. In this 
passage of the Epistle to the Corinthians the transla- 
tion of the Greek future into English or Gothic be- 
comes more definite than the original, at the risk of 
departing from the meaning of the author. 

Besides " haban," the Mceso-Gothic possessed an- 
other verb of nearly the same meaning — " aigan," 
*i%a>i represented in Anglo-Saxon by "agan" or 
" aegan," " to own," with which are connected the 
modern German " eigen " and all its kindred words. 
Portions of this verb " aigan" were used as an 
auxiliary in the same manner as " haban." 64 

The Gothic " munan," " to think," with its prae- 
terite " munaida," may also be held to have been 
used as a sort of auxiliary for the formation of a 
future. It was one of those strong perfects from an 
obsolete present (" mina") which usurped a present 
signification, and thus corresponds with " memini " 
and the Greek fjLifxovx. 6b 



64 Compare Grimm, Deutsche Gramm. b. iv. ss. 93, 178. See 
App. C. 

65 Compare Grimm, Gesch. der Deutschen Spr. b. ii. s. 904. 
In his Grammar Grimm appears to distinguish " munan, re- 
cordari" from "munan, putare," though he does not deny the 



Chap. II. MR. GUEST : " MUX." 61 

The Gothic " munan " answers to the Greek 
fxiXksiy : thus in John xiv. 22, jxiXXsjs- gj/,<pavi£f iv is 
translated by Ulfilas " munais gabairhtian," "thou 
" wilt manifest thyself." Similar instances occur 
elsewhere ; 66 but in many of them, at any rate, the 
notion of intention may be supposed to predominate, 
so that they scarcely afford examples of a proper 
future tense. In the Old Korse or Icelandic, how- 
ever, an irregular " munu " is employed as a future 
auxiliary ; and with this should be mentioned the 
Swedish and Danish interrogative particles " mon" 
and " monu." Mr. Edwin Guest tells us, " In old 
" English, ' mun ' often indicates mere futurity, like 
" the Icelandic ' mun;' and the peculiar sense now 
" given to it — that of obligation — appears to have 
" been its latest derivative meaning. The phrase 
u 'we mun go ' may have taken successively the 
" meanings, ' we think of going,' < we shall go/ 



" ' we must go.' " 67 



I confess that the examples cited by Mr. Guest 
are not of themselves sufficient to satisfy me that 
pure futurity was a sense of our provincial English 
" mun" anterior to that of obligation. Most of 
them appear to admit a shade of the latter meaning, 
but perhaps Mr. Guest has other strong reasons to 
urge in support of his theory. 

connection ; f/Jpova, in Homer seems always to refer to desire or 
determination. 

66 See above, note 63. Compare Luke x. 1, xix. 4, John vi. 
15 (Zahn's Ulnlas). 

6 ? Trans, of Philolog. Society, 1845, p. 155. Compare Grimm, 
Deutsche Gramm. b. ii. s. 762, Philolog. Museum, vol. ii. p. 321, 
and especially Bopp, Comparative Grammar (Transl.), p. 888. 



62 "SHALL" AND "WILL." Chap. II. 

As a matter of course one must advert to the 
Anglo-Saxon " munan " or " gemunan," " to mind," 
related as it evidently is to the Latin " mens," the 
Greek pceXs*, ^eXo/xa*, and many kindred forms. 
Even now, in common conversation, our English 
verb " to mean" may be used almost as a future 
auxiliary. There is nothing very harsh in saying, 
" It looks as if it meant to rain." It is difficult to 
believe that there is no etymological connection be- 
tween all these words and the Greek pcs'XXstv. 68 

The next verb which demands our attention is the 
representative of our modern " shall." The Gothic 



68 See Bopp, Comparative Grammar, p. 889. The interchange 
of x and v is common enough in Greek itself, as in the Cretan 
fiivrtov for fiixr/ov, the Sicilian flvSov for HxSov, and (pivraros for 
(piXrwrog (Miiller, Dorier. Ant. viii. s. 507). Compare also the 
Scholia in Aristophanes Ranee, 1. 822, \<rt<rKvvm zxroc, fAiraBurtv 
tou X us v. <rx.v\o; yccQ xiyzrui to ¥&gfAu. In like manner TrXivpav 
and Kviu/xwv were interchanged. If we want an instance in a 
modern language, it is afforded in the Spanish proper name 
Lebrija or Nebrija. 

It is hardly necessary to observe that f/AxXu is used of inani- 
mate objects, as of the stake with which Ulysses was about to 
put out the eye of the Cyclops — 

J AXX' on V/i rd^' o (jco^Xos iXci'ivos h frog) (tiXXiv 
"A^ao-Sui. — Odyss. ix. 1. 378. 



On the various senses of s^sXXsv, compare Mtsch. Anmerk. 
Odyss. i. 232. 

I forbear from entering upon the wide field of etymological 
conjecture which is opened by Buttmann (Lexilogus, b.ii. s. 260, 
in v. (iXiTTuv) in his observations on the gloss of Hesychius, 
(hXu, ^ahiht. The commentator appears to connect poXztv, (jcixXo>, 
p'iXu, (tiXopxt, &c, and to consider the idea of futurity in pixxw 
as derived from that of motion in poXuv on a principle analogous 
to that on which "je vais perdre," or "perditum in," are 
founded. See below, note 84, on the Latin desideratives. 



Chap. II. GRIMM : " SKULAN." 63 

form is " skulan " in the infinitive; and it also be- 
longs to that ancient class of words, each of which 
Grimm characterises as a " displaced preterite," 69 
or a praeterite promoted to do the duty of a present; 
I have already observed that we are familiar enough 
with such verbs as Ks'xro^/xai, ias/jlovoc, or " odi," 
" novi," " coepi ;" but in this class of Teutonic verbs 
the praeterite made, as it were, a fresh start in its 
new character, and acquired a conjugation of its 
own. 

Grimm's whole discussion of these curious forms 
in the Teutonic language is most interesting, He 
reckons thirteen verbs of the sort in Gothic — all 
originally strong perfects of very old presents, most 
of which, it would appear, gradually cast off their 
special sense, and acquired at a very early period 
a sort of auxiliary character. If his account of 
"skulan" be correct, it affords a remarkable in- 
stance how the institutions of a people, in the 
most remote antiquity, may set their mark on 
its language. He says, 70 " ' Skal,' debeo, implies 
" a form ' skila;' but the reader will be surprised at 
" the original meaning, which I affix to these words. 
" 'Skila' must have meant, 'I kill or wound; 3 
" ' skal,' ' I have killed or wounded, and I am there-^ 
" * fore liable to pay the wergeld? We find the 
" Gothic 'skilja' ' lanio,' a ' slayer' or 'killer,' as 
" derived from ' skila ' (1 Cor. x. 25) ; and I believe 
" that to the same source may be traced the old 
" High German 6 seelmo,' ' pestis,' and ' scelmic,' 



69 See above, note 64, &c. 

70 Geschichte der Deutschen Spr. b. ii. s. 902. See App. D, 



64 * SHALL " AND "WILL." Chap. II. 

" ' morticinus,' like ' helm, 9 a helmet or covering, 
" from ' hilu.' Perhaps, too, the old Norse ' skilja,' 
" ' discriminare,' ' intelligere,' may be added ; if 
" we are justified in supposing the original notion 
" was that of dissection, or cutting in pieces, ' dilani- 
u c are,' ' discindere,' ' diffindere.' We shall no 
" longer, at any rate, be embarrassed to explain why 
" in Ulfilas ' dulgs ' means ' debitum, a debt,' whilst 
" in Anglo-Saxon ' dolg,' and the old High German 
" ' tolc,' signify ' a wound.' In the old Norse, 
" ' dolgr ' is 6 an enemy.' The infliction of a wound 
" was as much the subject of the wergeld as a deadly 
"blow; and the expressions ' sculd ' and ' dulgs' 
u illustrate one another completely." " Dulgis- 
" skula" and " dulgishaitja " are used by Ulfilas for 
the debtor and the creditor respectively : "he who 
" owes the debt," and " he who bids it" or " de- 
" mands it." 71 

No philologist is more entitled to attention than 
Grimm in such a matter ; and it is certainly curious 
to find our English word which denotes moral duty, 
pointing to the forests of Germany, where the death- 
blow was compounded for by the " wergeld." 

It is clear, at any rate, that in the Moeso-Gothic 
" skal " was used to signify " I owe." For instance, 
in John ix. 4, the words of Christ, e^s $h spyoc^aQxi 
are translated by Ulfilas, " Ik skal waurkjan." 

" Shall" retained this sense in English with % 
case after it, as in Chaucer's 6 Court of Love :' — 

" For by the faithe I shall to God." 
71 Luke vii. 4. 



Chap. II. GRIMM: " SKULAN." 65 

Hence, then, the secondary sense of duty or moral 
obligation, as in the case of " ought " being the pre- 
terite of" owe." In both instances, too, it will be 
observed that the moral or secondary sense has super- 
seded that from which it was originally derived. 72 

Grimm admits that the Moeso-Gothic " skulan " 
rarely or never is applied to express the simple 
future, but he seems to quote almost as an excep- 
tion the translation of the passage of St. Luke 
(i. 66) rl apx to waiSlov tovto sctcm ; " what manner 
" of child shall this be ? " " Hua skuli thata barn 
"wairthan?" It appears to me, however, that 
although "skuli" apparently translates the Greek 
future, yet it really signifies " what manner of 
" child is this destined to be ? " and does not there- 
fore represent the simple future. The connection 
of the sense of destiny with that of debt is obvious 
enough : %avm is really translated by the two Gothic 
words " skuli wairthan." 

I need not repeat what has been said above with 
reference to our English "shall," — how supposed 
foreknowledge, or the assumption of a foregone con- 
clusion, is often the principle on which that verb is 
preferred to "will." The Anglo-Saxon "sceal" 73 
is frequently used with the sense of "oportet" or 
" decet," but according to Grimm it also occurs with 
a pure future sense. Bosworth, however, says, " It 
" is said to denote the future tense when followed 
"by an infinitive verb, but it rather conveys an 



7 2 See above, note 64. 

73 See Grimm, Deutsche Gramm. b. iv. s. 179; Bosworth, 
A. S. Diet, in v. " sceal/' 



66 " SHALL" AND " WILL." Chap. II. 

" idea of obligation or command." At any rate the 
use of this verb as an auxiliary for expressing the 
future tense appears to have rapidly established 
itself in most of the Teutonic dialects, so that it 
may be reckoned as the oldest form of the German 
future. 

We find it in the Nibelungen Lied ; as, for in- 
stance, when Chriemhilt announces her intention of 
foregoing both the pains and joys of love, she says — 
Ich sol sie miden beide. — I. 68. 

It occurs also, formally at least, with the third 
person — 

In sol nut triwen dienen immer Sivrides hant. 74 — IV. C60. 

It is remarkable that, notwithstanding this early 
usage of " sollen," the verb hardly exists in modern 
High German as a future auxiliary, having been 
supplanted by werden : whilst in the Low German 
dialects, and in English, Flemish, and Dutch, it is 
thoroughly and completely established. " Soil," in 
High German, retains scarcely any sense except 
that of " debeo," " I ought to do a thing," and 
other meanings which are closely allied with this, as, 
for instance, destiny, or command. The usage in 
modern German, of 6C soil," to denote common re- 
port, or supposition, is also curious: e.g. " Der 
" Kaiser soil gestorben sein," 75 " the emperor is 
" said or supposed to be dead." Adelung 76 states 
that in old Swedish the substantive "skuld" signi- 



74 For other instances see Grimm, Gr. b. iv. s. 180. 

75 See above, p. 21, cb. 1. 

76 Adelung, Worterbuch, in v. " sollen." 



Chap. II. THE GERMAN "WILL." 67 

fied futurity ; we know that the modern German 
" schuld " means debt, or obligation. The Swedes 
and Danes still form their futures with " skall," and 
" skal," retaining occasionally, as in English, the 
more definite sense of duty. 77 

It appears that the Gothic " viljan," 73 the repre- 
sentative of our modern auxiliary "-will," never 
expresses the genuine future, but implies volition or 
intention. An approximation, however, to its auxi- 
liary use may be traced in the High German of 
Ottfried, in the ninth century, and continues to be 
found in other writers, as well as in the Nibelungen 
Lied. Grimm says, "It is evident that this circum- 
" locution, both in old and middle High German, is 
" properly limited to the first person; for it is only 
" where a man speaks of himself that he can be so 
" sure of the will and determination as to predict 
" what is about to be done. When the verb is 
" used with the second or third person it retains 
" simply the sense of volition, and does not express 
" the notion that a thing is certainly about to hap- 
" pen: thus, 'ihr welt wizzen' means, not 'scietis,' 
" 'you will know, 5 but 'scire vultis,' you wish to 
" ' know.' In modern High German, however, ' er 
" ' will kommen ' is undoubtedly in some cases 
" applied in the sense of ' veniet, he will come/ 
" whilst ' du wills t kommen ' can scarcely stand for 
" ' venies,' but must mean ' you have a mind — you 
" 4 wish to come.' All other German dialects abide 



77 See -App. E. 

? 8 Grimm, Deutsche Gramm. b. iv. ss. 180, 181. 

E 2 



68 " SHALL » AND " WILL," Chap. II. 

" by the specific sense of the verb : thus, for example, 
"the Anglo-Saxon 'biddan ville' means 'rogare 
" volo, I wish to ask/ 'he ville etan,' ' vult edere, 
" ' he wishes to eat.' There is the same difference 
" between this and the future as between the 
" French c je veux manger,' and ' je mangerai.' ' 

The use of " will " with the first person, for the 
purpose of expressing the future, continues in 
parts of Germany, as, for instance, on the Ehine. 79 
This idiom contrasts very oddly with the English 
appropriation of " shall " to the first, and " will " to 
the second and third persons ; but the different 
principle in which the respective forms originate 
has been already explained. 

Grimm discusses the use of "soil," will, and 
" werden," in modern High German in the following 
passage : 80 — 

" Quid faciam ? cannot well be expressed other- 
" wise than by 'was soil ich thun?' wollen denotes 
" rather the free exercise of the will; sollen the 
" imperative future, as, ' du sollst warten ' (expec- 
" tabis) ; werden the pure abstract future, ' the event 
" ' will happen ' (eveniet). Wollen adapts itself 
" best to the first person, sollen to the second, 
" werden to the third. So far the modern High 
" German has worked out the idea of the future 
". with greater exactness than any other dialect, 
" but still in many cases a choice among these forms 



79 Grimm, Gesch. der Deutsehen Spr., b. ii. s. 908 ; Deutsche 
Gramm., b. iv. ss. 182, 183, note. See above, p. 14. 
a0 Deutsche Gramm., ib. 



Chap. II. THE GERMAN " WILL." 69 

" is left open to us. For example, * quid tandem de 
" ' te fiet ? ' may be expressed ' was soil — oder will — 
" ' oder wird — aus dir werden ? ' Luther writes ' will 
" ' werden ' in preference to ' wird werden.' ' Cras 
" * veniam ' can only be translated by ' ich will ' or 
" ' ich werde kommen,' not by ' ich soil.' ' Amabo te, 
" — ' osculabor te ' cannot be rendered otherwise than 
" by ' ich will dich lieben — dich kiissen.' On the 
" other hand, a man must say ' ich werde dich lieben 
" ' auch wenn du mich hassest,' a distinction to 
" which the Dutch and Flemish < ik zal beminnen ' 
w cannot attain." 

Now it will be observed that this last example 
of Grrimm's at once explains itself ; " ich will dich 
lieben," &c, does not express what he wants, because 
the essence of the sentence is incompatible with 
volition. This proves that "will" in German has 
not lost its own special meaning, so as to become a 
mere future auxiliary. " I cannot help loving you, 
" though I don't want to do so," is the point of the 
whole. 

The German, no doubt, has a certain advantage 
in the choice between three instead of two auxili- 
aries, but I cannot admit that it expresses the 
various shades of a future sense with greater pre- 
cision than the English. The two languages differ 
very curiously, and the future idiom of each is 
founded on a different view. In translating such a 
sentence as "quid de te fiet?" it is by no means 
indifferent which auxiliary is used, and the trans- 
lator, in rendering the pure future, must employ that 
auxiliary which seems best to suit the context. 



70 " SHALL " AND « WILL." Chap. II. 

Before we proceed to different verbs, it is worth 
while to turn aside for a moment and look at idioms 
in other languages which are analogous to our use 
of -will." 

Every reader of Herodotus knows the instances in 
which sSsXco or 3-sXo; is employed in a manner differ- 
ing very little from our own use of the corresponding 
auxiliary. 81 Thus Harpagus, debating whether he' 
should kill the child Cyrus, is represesented as 
saying, e! Ss SsXricsi ks tav ^vyocrspx ravrnv cUvafirivou 
ri Tvpawis (I. c. 109); and again, in the second 
Book (c. 14), Herodotus speculates on the future 
fate of Egypt in the following words : sY cr(pt sSsXwo-si 
f) xouon £ evspSe Miixtyios av^dvsuhxi. An English- 
man, in common conversation, might speak meta- 
phorically in such a case and say, " If the country 



81 See Liddell and Scott, Lexicon in v, no. 4. Compare 
Aristoph. Vespaa, 1. 537, and Bekker's note. In this a reference 
is made to Coray on Isocrates, p. 244, who, it is there said, 
"junctum infinitivo praesentis pro peraphrasi futuri habet " — 
a view of the idiom not unnatural for a modern Greek. Com- 
pare Ast. ad Plat. Phaedrum, p. 235, Kepubl. pp. 423, 548 
(Lips. 1814). The use of iSiku in Homer, as contrasted with 
that of fiovXopui, is curious. The latter involves a stronger 
notion of will or volition, and is therefore applied generally to 
the gods. In Iliad A, 1. 319, (titers is the reading, I believe, 
now adopted for \§(xu. See Buttmann's Lexilog. in v. (IduXopui. 
Another English use of "will," or rather of "would," which 
has its parallel in one of the senses of 13/Xsi in Herodotus, is 
that in which it denotes habit — 

"At every bridall would he singe and hoppe." 

Chaucer, Coke's Tale, 1. 4373. 

Corresponding to piyu.'ktt, KpyiypoLra. pzyoiXoi<ri xtv^uvonn \§i\it 
KarutokcrSai, Herodot. L. viii. c. 50. The habit is inferred 
from the existence of the will or inclination to do the act. 



Chap. II. ANALOGIES TO THE GREEK. 71 

" below Memphis shall choose, or take it into its 
" head, to increase ;" but such sentences would be 
regularly translated by " shall," in consequence of 
their conditional character. Without the "if "in 
either case, the simple assertion of futurity would 
require " will :" " the succession will come round 
" to this girl;" or, "the country below Memphis 
" will increase." An Irishman, Scotchman, or 
American might possibly render the conditional 
sentences by " will " also. 

So far as I remember, this use of s^sXcu in He- 
rodotus is confined to examples in which a sup- 
position is made, and which in English are expressed 
quite as properly by the present subjunctive as by 
the future. 

The modern Greek, when it dropped so many of 
the inflections of its mother tongue, availed itself of 
§s\co pretty much as it is used by Herodotus, and 
applied it as a future auxiliary. 82 " The future," 
says Mr. Donaldson, " has various forms, §e\co ypi^n 
or ypoL-^zi occurring commonly in the written lan- 
guage, while the usual conversational future is &<£ 
y^i^oj or ypdtyco ; &<% is a contraction for SsXsi va, 
and should be followed by the conjunctive ; it is 
generally, however, joined with the indicative." 
Thus, whilst in ancient Greek the desiderative 
verbs, such as Spacslco, were formed directly from the 
future, in the modern language the future is con- 



82 Donaldson's Modern Greek Grammar, Edinburgh, 1853, p. 
21, 22. There is also a conditional form, ySiXz y^u } "I would 
write," '/jSite ygaQu;, &c. 



72 " SHALL " AND " WILL." Chap. II. 

structed by means of the verb which expresses will 
or desire : one process is the converse of the other. 

Bopp says, 83 " Several idioms quite independent 
" of one another have, simply through internal im- 
" pulse, come to the decision of expressing the 
"■ future by the verb ' to will.' It is certain that 
" modern Greek and the old High German (§ 661) — 
" nay, even the various German dialects — have in 
" this respect borrowed nothing from one another, 
" nor imitated each other. The old Sclavonic also 
" sometimes employs an auxiliary verb signifying 
" ' to will ' to express the future. 

" It is not however to be overlooked that the 
" examples which Dobrowsky (p. 380) adduces 
" from the translation of the Bible are in the Greek 
" text preceded by ixiWu ; for which reason, unless 
" other instances occur, we must conjecture that 
" the wish of keeping as close as possible to the ori- 
" ginal suggested the use of his verb ' choshchu ' to 
" the Sclavonic translator." (See Luke xxi. ; Matth. 
xi. 14.) 

The author then goes on to observe that the San- 
scrit sometimes employs its desideratives to express 
the future, and that the Latin forms desiderative 
verbs from the future participle in " urus," abbre- 
viating the u and adding the characteristic of the 
fourth coDJugation. 84 

The Wallachian or Daco-Boman offers one of the 
two exceptional instances of the formation of a 
future among the Bomance languages, and furnishes 



83 Comparative Grammar, Transl. p. 889. 84 See App. F. 



Chap. II. "WERDEN." 73 

another example of the independent adoption of a 
future auxiliary, " will." " Cantabo," we are told 
by Diez, is expressed by " voiu centa." 85 

In the use of "werden" 86 for the future, mo- 
dern High German stands alone ; even in middle 
High German it can scarcely be said to have been 
employed as a simple future auxiliary with the 
infinitive mood. Before the time of Luther, Hans 
Sachs, and Fischart, the idiom had become estab- 
lished, and, having thus grown up in the course of 
the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, " werden " 
has now completely superseded " sollen." It seems 
very doubtful whether the Gothic use of " vairthith " 
for egtoli, which has been noticed above, is in any 
way connected with the High German application 
of " werden." 

Very little seems to have been gained by the 
substitution of this verb for "sollen" and its kin- 
dred forms ; on the contrary, a modern German 
sentence is sometimes overloaded with " werdens." 
Again, it is ambiguous. " Wird begraben " may 
mean either " sepeliet " or " sepelitur," and it is 
very possible that the passive use of the auxiliary 
may have facilitated its introduction with the active 
infinitive in a future sense. Nothing can well be 

85 The Romance language of the Grisons forms its future by 
the representative of the Latin " venire, "as " veng a cantar," 
Diez, Gramm, der Roman. Sprachen, b. ii. s. 100. Compare 
above, notes 68 and 84. 

86 What follows is substantially translated from Grimm, 
Deutsche Grammat. b. iv. s. 181. As to the early use of 
" werden," -compare the same work, b. iv. ss. 7, 92. It should 
be observed that the Swiss dialect of German forms its future 
by "werden." See Stalder, Schweizerisch.es Idiotikon, b. i. s. 49. 



74 "SHALL" AND "WILL." Chap. II. 

clumsier than the German passive future, " wird 
" gegeben werden," unless it be the Latin form of 
the same tense, " datum iri." 

Still it must be admitted that in itself and in the 
abstract, as Bopp says, 87 " werden is in fact the most 
" natural and most certain expression of future 
" being — far better than the auxiliary forms, * to 
" ' will,' and c to owe.' He who is becoming will 
■••* certainly arrive at being ; he is one who will be 
" hereafter. The man who ' wills ' or ' owes ' may 
" be unable to give effect to his will or duty; he 
" may be hindered from doing what he would or 
" should, or he may alter his mind and not carry 
" out what he intended." 

Perhaps the only relic in modern English of 
the verb corresponding to " werden " is in such 
expressions as, " woe worth thee ! " u woe worth 
" the day !" in which I conceive that " woe " is a 
substantive, and that " thee " and " day " have the 
force of the dative case, as in " meseems " and 
" methinks." 88 

Mr. Guest 89 informs us that in our Southern dia- 
lects the verb " worth " was once very generally 
employed with a future signification, and thus in- 
flected : — 

Sing. Worthe, worst, worth. Plur. Wortheth. 
Among examples, he gives the following : — 

" Help thi kynde heritage, and thou worst (i. e. shalt be) 
ther kynge anon. ,, -— Robert of Gloucester, 101. 

8 7 Comparative Grammar (Transl.), p. 888. 

88 See Dr. Latham's English Language, p. 319. 

89 Transactions of Philolog. Society, 1846, p. 224. 



Chap. II. ROMANCE LANGUAGES. 75 

Latimer 90 used it in the sense of " fio," as, " and I 
" thought oft, Jesu, what will worth? what will be 
" the end of this man ? " 

The future of the Eomance languages has been 
already referred to, but any consideration of auxi- 
liary verbs applicable to this tense would be alto- 
gether imperfect without some more detailed notice 
of the principle on which, according to M. Eay- 
nouard and the best authorities, this important class 
of modern tongues has formed this tense. We may 
reckon the languages directly descended from the 
Latin as six — that is to say, two Eastern, the Wal- 
lachian or Daco-Roman, and the Italian ; two South* 
western, the Spanish and Portuguese; and two 
North-western, the Provencal and the French. 91 
To these may, of course, be added subordinate 
branches of each stock, such as the Walloon, which 
forms a sort of stratum between the French and the 
Flemish ; 92 the Catalonian, more nearly related to 
the Provengal than to its sister tongues of the Penin- 



90 Fourth Sermon before Edward VI. Speaking of Lord Sey- 
mour of Sudeley. 

91 Diez, Gram mat, der Eomanischen Sprachen, b. ii. ss. 99, 
100. An account equally clear, and more accessible to the 
English reader, will be found in the essay of the Eight Hon. 
Sir George C. Lewis on the Origin and Formation of the Romance 
Languages (London, 1839), pp. 193 to 196. I have taken the 
extract in my text from Diez only because there is no transla- 
tion of his Grammar that I know of, and consequently it is not 
so accessible to the English reader. 

92 The author of the book ' Melanges sur les Langues, Dia- 
lectes, et Patois' (Paris, 1831), estimates the number of persons 
speaking Walloon as about 1,200,000 (p. 17). If I mistake not, 
the boundary of the Walloon and Flemish is to be found a few 
miles south of Mechlin, but I am not confident of this fact. 



76 " SHALL " AND "WILL." €hap. II. 

sula ; the Chur-Walsch, or language of the Grrisons ; 93 
the Gallician, almost identical with the Portuguese ; 
and all the varied or provincial dialects of France, 
Italy, and the islands of the Mediterranean. 

The following account of the future tense of the 
Eomance languages is extracted from the Grammar 
of Diez. 94 " The verb habere was again used in a 
" circumlocution to express the future. It would 
" have been possible to follow the analogy of the 
" past tenses, and to have employed the future pas- 
" sive participle in dus, just as the past participle was 
" applied in the prasterite. The sense ' I will sing' 
" might have been expressed by ' habeo cantandum 
" ' aliquem/ just as well as the sense ' I have sung ' 
" by * habeo cantatum.' The Latin syntax, how- 
" ever, itself supplied a more convenient form by 
" the combination of ' habere ' with the infinitive of 
" the verb — a construction not unknown to the 
" Greek, and which may have been more common 



93 The country of the Grisons, part of the ancient Rhaetia, is 
supposed by some to retain in its proper names traces of the 
relationship of its original population with the Etruscans (see 
Ludwig Steub, Urbewohner Raetiens, Miinchen, 1843; compare 
JSTiebuhr, Rom.- Gesch., b. i. s. 125). A large number of per- 
sons in the Grisons speak a dialect of German, another portion 
use a patois of Italian, and about half are said to employ what 
they themselves call "antiquissm lungaig da l'aulta Rhaetia," 
which is derived from the Latin. Compare Adelung's Mithri- 
dates (Vater), b. ii. ss. 598, 610. I do not know whether Dr* 
W. Freund has yet published the volume which he proposed on 
this language. He gave a lecture upon the subject before the 
Ethnographical Society in 1853. See Athenaeum, April 30, 
1853, and Oct. 8, 1853. 

94 See reference, note 91. 



Chap. II. ROMANCE LANGUAGES. 77 

" in the spoken 95 than the written language among 
" the Eomans. ' Habeo audire ' conveys the same no 
" tion as ' habeo audiendum,' or ' habeo quod au- 
" ' diam/ 4 I have to hear' (Voss. Aristarch. vii. 
" 51), and the relation of this to ' I will hear/ or ' I 
" shall hear/ is obvious enough. 

" If we suppose the verb ' have ' to mean ' this 
" ' belongs to me ' — if ' habeo ' expresses ' meum 
" ' est ' (scilicet negotium), 96 and the infinitive be 
" taken as a substantive in the objective case — still 
" retaining its verbal power of governing a case of 
" its own — then the Eomance 6 cantare aliquem 
" ' habeo ' becomes properly equivalent to ' cantabo 
" ' aliquem/ So far as form is concerned, a process 
" was thus repeated with which we are familiar in 
" the ancient languages ; the auxiliary verb gradu- 

95 This construction of s^w in Homer usually takes the infini- 
tive of the aorist, and denotes power or capacity. Sometimes, 
however, it has the present, as 

o<Pp ccv z%'/i$ p>07xiw ffhv yciffrhp oivccXrov. 

Odyss. xviii. 1. 383. 
Cicero (Ep. ad Fam. i. Ep. 4) uses "habeo polliceri" for "I 
can promise." In Valerius Flaccus we find — 

tollique vicissim 

Pontus habet. — i. 671. 

Where, as Yossius remarks, "habet" is opposed to "casus" in 
the preceding lines : it might well, therefore, be translated by 
the German " sollen." This construction resembles that of the 
sentence of Tertullian, " Filius Dei mori habuit" (de habitu 
muliebri, c. i.). Ducange quotes another sentence, "Ego 
enim eum habeo baptizare." Compare what is said above of the 
use of the corresponding verb in Mceso- Gothic. 

96 For instance, "Puto esse meum quid sentiam exponere" 
(Cicero, ad Attic, v. Ep. 13), "I think it my business — it be- 
longs to me," which presents a clear analogy with the verb 
" owe," in the sense of being the owner of a thing. See App. C. 



78 



" SHALL " AND " WILL." 



Chap. II. 



" ally lost all meaning of its own, and became a 
" mere inflexion. It finally coalesced as a suffix 
" with the infinitive, and under the guise of a single 
w word replaced the Latin future, which very pro- 
" bably had owed its origin to a process of the same 
" kind. 97 The Italian 6 cantero ' is nothing more or 
" less than the combination of ' cantar ho.' ' 

The proofs of this formation are to be found in 
the following considerations : — 

1st. It is a fact that in Spanish, Portuguese, 
Italian, French, and Provencal, the termination of 
the future, through all its persons, varies as the verb 
" to have " varies in the same language. The fol- 
lowing table will exhibit this sufficiently as regards 
the first person. 98 



Language. 


Italian. 


Spanish. 


Portuguese. 


Provencal. 


French. 


First person of 

verb 

" to have." 


ho. 


he. 


hei. 


ai. 


ai. 


First person of 
future of 
" to sing." 


cantero. 


cantare'. 


cantarei. 


chantarai. 


chanterai. 



2ndly. There exists in Italian a recognised, 
though obsolete, form of the present of " avere," 
which is " aggio," and accordingly we find an obsolete 
form of the future in correspondence with it : for 
example, " canteraggio." 

3rdly. This origin of the future is confirmed by 
the analogy to it of the subjunctive mood in the 
same language. 



97 See above, note 56. 

98 Compare Lewis on the Romance Languages, p. 196. 



Chap. II. ROMANCE LANGUAGES. 79 

4thly. In some of the Eomance languages the 
auxiliary has coalesced with the infinitive so imper- 
fectly that the personal pronoun can occasionally be 
inserted between them. This is so both in Spanish 
and Portuguese; as, for instance, " cantar-te-he " 
may stand for " te cantare." In the Sardinian dia- 
lect " we are told that the representative of " ha- 
bere " has taken its place before the verb, and has 
not become an inflection : thus the future of the 
verb-substantive is given as " appu essi/' " has essi," 
" hat essi." Plural, " eus essi," " eis essi," " hanta 
essi." 

No facts in the history of language are more strik- 
ing than those presented to us in the reorganization 
(as it may be called) of the Eomance languages. 
The case is well stated by Sir George Lewis (p. 43), 
He says, " They have just the amount of resemblance 
" which might have been expected in languages 
" derived from the same original, and just the 
" amount of difference which might have been 
" expected in languages formed under the same 
" circumstances, independently of each other." 

facies non omnibus una, 

Xec diversa tamen, qualeni decet esse sororum. 

It is remarkable how, in this independent forma- 



99 Diez, b. ii. s. 100, Anm. This insertion of the pronoun 
between the infinitive and the auxiliary verb shows itself in the 
subjunctive also. Thus we find in ' El Conde Lucanor,' " pla- 
cermeia" for "placeria a me." 'El Conde Lucanor' was com- 
posed early in the 14th century by Don Juan Manuel, a prince 
of the blood royal. See Ticknor, History of Spanish Literature, 
vol. i. p. 70. 



80 " SHALL" AND "WILL." Chap. II. 

tion of separate tongues, the instinctive principle 
of language was in each case carrying out a double 
process at the same time. Whilst with the one 
hand the inflections of the Latin, the parent-stock, 
were rudely stripped off and apparently thrown 
away, with the other the fragments were uncon- 
sciously put together again under the pressure of a 
strong feeling for the necessity of grammatical forms. 

Few men have written on language whose words are 
better worth quoting than William von Humboldt's : 
he speaks as follows of the construction of the Romance 
tongues. 100 " Be the cause what it may, the fact 
" is certain — languages essentially rich in inflected 
" forms gradually become poorer in them, and replace 
" them by distinct words, until, when looked at in 
" detail, they seem to approach languages based on 
" an original principle totally different and less per- 
" feet than that which is the foundation of their own 
" structure. 

" Abundant examples of this process may be 
" drawn from the modern German, and especially 
" from the English ; nor does it appear to me that 
" the mixture of a Romance dialect (the Norman) 



100 Wilhelni von Humboldt, Ueber die Verschiedenheit des 
Menschlichen Sprachbaues, ss. 285, 286, 288. It will be under- 
stood that I leave untouched the question, how far, in times 
which philological research cannot reach, inflected languages 
may have been originally formed by the "agglutination" of 
significant sounds. I am fully aware also how little the frag- 
ments translated in the text do justice to Humboldt's whole 
argument. On the question of the scanty remains of the early 
British tongue in English, compare Hallam, supplemental notes 
to Middle Ages, No. 131, p. 225. 



Chap. II. ROMANCE LANGUAGES. 81 

" with the latter has any connection with this fact, 
" inasmuch as such mixture exercised little or no 
" influence on the grammatical construction. I do 
" not, however, admit that a system of inflections 
" originally existing ceases to produce its effect on 
" the structure of a language, even to the most 
" remote time. To such a lasting operation of the 
" genius of a language must be attributed the pure 
" grammatical structure of the various tongues 
" derived from the Latin. It is impossible to ex- 
" plain the remarkable phenomena connected with 
" the reconstruction of these tongues without laying 
" proper stress on the fact that the grammatical 
" principle of the parent language was but little im- 
" paired by contact with the foreign elements, which 
" became united with it in the course of forming the 
" Romance dialects. 

" The languages indigenous, so to speak, in the 
" countries where these dialects were developed, 
" had little or no share in their organization : such 
" at least was the case with the Basque, and most 
" probably it was so with the idioms prevailing 
" throughout Graul. Thus, whilst many single words 
" were without doubt derived from the invading 
" tribes, who were mainly Teutons, yet the influence 
" of their speech on the grammar of the Eomance 
" language can hardly be traced. It is with great 
" difficulty that a people allow the mould or form in 
" which habit has taught them to cast the expression 
" of their thoughts to be altered. Accordingly the 
" foundation of the grammatical structure of the new 
" languages remained the same as that of the lan- 

F 



82 " SHALL " AND "WILL." Chap. II. 

" guage which was destroyed, although no doubt 
" the process of destruction had begun long before 
" it was in any way perceptible. The Eoman 
" tongue, while the Empire flourished, had been 
" spoken in the provinces according to different 
" idioms, and in a manner distinct from that which 
" prevailed in Latium and the city. It is likely 
" that even in this original centre of the nation, the 
" popular language retained peculiarities which be- 
" came more generally diffused as the cultivated 
" speech declined. Variations in pronunciation, sole- 
" cisms in grammar, and probably even aid by 
" means of prepositions to the structure of a phrase, 
" may have prevailed in popular speech, though the 
" more cultivated language admitted them only as 
" exceptions. As this cultivated language, in the 
" gradual decline of the state, ceased to be upheld 
" at its proper level by literature and colloquial in- 
" tercourse, the necessary consequence was that 
" vulgarisms and popular phrases began to predo- 
" minate. The degradation of the tongue in the 
" provinces continued too to advance in proportion 
" as the ties which bound them to the Empire be- 
" came looser and looser. 

" At last the foreign immigration carried to the 
" furthest point this double process of decay. It 
" was no longer a mere sinking of a language which 
" had ceased to hold sway ; but essential forms were 
" stripped off, or violently shattered, often because 
" they were really misunderstood. Still, at the 
" same time, it was necessary to substitute for 
" such forms, some means for maintaining unity of 



Chap. II. ROMANCE LANGUAGES. 83 

6 speech among the population ; and this had to be 
1 done from the elements immediately at hand, 
' which were often ignorantly combined. Amidst 
' all changes, however, there remained alive in the 
6 sinking language the essential principle of its 
' structure — the clear distinction between the no- 
6 tion of things and their relations, and the craving 
' for means to express this distinction which the 
6 habit of ages had stamped on the mind of the 
people. The impress of this feeling clung to 
' every fragment of the language, and it would not 
' have been effaced if the nations themselves had 
' been unconscious of its existence. It depended, 
' however, on each of these to pick out the ele- 
' ments on which the principle depended— to dis- 
6 entangle and recombine them. The phenomena 
6 presented by the Eomance languages, which thus, 
6 in countries far removed from one another, sur- 
6 prise us by striking coincidences in detail, can 
6 only be explained in one way, and that is by 
6 assuming an uniformity of principle in their 
6 change, based on one and the same instinctive 
' feeling for language, working with a mother 
' tongue, whose grammatical structure at any rate 
' remained one and the same, and in the main un- 
6 impaired. Particular forms disappeared, but the 
' essential principle of form in the abstract still 
6 lived on and shed its influence over each new 
' creation." 101 



101 I must observe that the principle involved in this extract 
has a direct bearing on the question of classical education, if it 

F 2 



84 " SHALL " AND « WILL." Chap. II.) 

Now nothing affords a better illustration of these 
remarks than the fact with which we are now 
concerned — the mode in which a future was inde- 
pendently organized in all the Eomance languages. 

The particular forms of the Latin future, as it 
existed in the ordinary conjugations, had sunk ; but 
the instinct of language caused the void to be felt. 
A Latin idiom was caught up to supply its place. 
In the great majority of cases this idiom was one 
and the same. But the habit of inflecting the verb 
itself — the synthetic principle — still lived and ulti- 
mately prevailed; so that in the French, Spanish, 
Portuguese, Italian, and Provencal, the auxiliary 
verb ended by becoming a suffix, combining with 
the root, and forming by inflection a new and regu- 
lar future tense. 

On the other hand, in the languages of the Teu- 
tonic stock, in which the force of this synthetic 
•principle did not prevail in the same degree, no 



be only with reference to its influence on our own language. 
Since the invention of printing a language is moulded and 
formed mainly by its literature. Popular speech and popular 
writing are sure to exercise great control, and they will operate 
entirely in what may be called an " analytic " direction. The 
safeguard against excess on this side which is afforded by the 
classical education of polished and cultivated writers is on this 
account all the more important, as balancing the tendency to 
forego a system of grammatical forms. The real excellence of 
a language, as far as its structure is concerned, would appear 
to consist in its blending in due proportion the precision and 
convenience of the analytic with the conciseness and force of 
the synthetic character. I trust the habit of "telegraphic" 
communication may not re-act on the structure of modern 
languages; if it does so strongly, we shall approach the idiom 
of the Chinese more and more nearly. 



Chap. II. TEUTONIC FUTURES. 85 

such amalgamation of the auxiliary with the princi- 
pal verb — no formation of an inflected future — has 
taken place. The result is that the Germans are 
left with " werden," and we are obliged to do the 
best we can with "shall" and "will." I think it 
has been shown, however, that the English applica- 
tion of these two verbs, though it may be difficult 
to acquire and preserve incorrupt, is neither irra- 
tional in its origin, nor deficient in force and pre- 
cision in its use. 



86 "SHALL" AND "WILL." App. A. 



APPENDIX. 



(A.) 

In the sentence of Cicero (Ep. ix. 15), " Nam mihi scito jam 
" a regibus allatas esse litteras, qui bus mihi gratias agant, 
" quod se mea sententia reges appellaverim," the reflexive 
pronoun is used, because the dependent sentence is placed 
in the mouth of the persons addressing Cicero, and is in fact 
a quotation (compare Zumpt, Lat. Gramm. § 550, n. 1). 
The case is, however, a remarkable one, inasmuch as the 
quotation is in an oblique form, and the use of the first per- 
son, " appellaverim," seems inconsistent with a reflexive pro- 
noun in the third. In Cornelius Nepos (Themistocles, c. 8), 
" Domino navis, qui sit aperit, multa pollicitus si se con- 
" servasset," we could not translate " se" by " himself," be- 
cause our reflexive pronoun would relate to the subject of the 
verb " conservasset." The principle is in fact the same as in 
the passage of Cicero. 

The sentence of Livy (L. i. c. 54) is as follows : (Sextas 
Tarquinius) " e suis unum sciscitatum Eomam ad patrem 
" mittit quidnam se facere vellet, quandoquidem ut omnia 
" unus Gabiis posset, ei Dii dedissent." Zumpt assumes that 
the common usage would require "sibi;" but I believe that 
the proper mode of translating this passage is to refer " ei" to 
the father — Sextus meant, according to Livy, to imply that 
everything was at his father's disposal. I conceive that the 
father, not Sextus, is the subject of the verb " posset." If this 
be so, the pronouns would appear perfectly regular. 

The following sentence of Csesar is again remarkable : — 
" Responderunt (scil. Sicambri) Populi R. imperium Rhenum 
"finire: si se invito Germanos in Galliam transire non 
" sequum existirnaret, cur sui quidquam esse imperii aut 



App. A. USE OF " SE " IN LATIN, 87, 

" potestatis trans Rhenum postularet" (L. iv. c. 16). The 
Sicambri, in whose mouth the sentence is placed, are sup- 
posed to be remonstrating with Caesar himself, to whom " se" 
and " sui " relate, as the immediate nominative of " existi- 
"maret" and "postularet," as well as the narrator who 
quotes the speech. I am far from pretending to explain all 
the anomalies and difficulties which appear to exist in cer- 
tain cases with regard to the Latin reflexive pronoun. 

Professor Key (Latin Gr. p. 219) refers to the speech of 
Ariovistus (Caesar, de B. Gr. i. 36), and very justly says that 
in it " there is much freedom in the use of these pronouns." 
The whole speech is in an oblique form : in the passage 
about the middle, " Magnam Caesarem injuriam facere, qui 
" suo adventu vectigalia sibi deteriora faceret," suo points to 
the immediate subject of the subordinate verb, sibi to the 
speaker. So again towards the end, " neminem sibi nisi 
" sua pernicie contendisse," se and sua refer to different per- 
sons. It may be said indeed that " sua pernicie " is a sort of 
adverbial formula, irrespective of person. The same kind of 
explanation might be applied to the "per-se" and "inter-se" 
quoted by Professor Key from Cicero, as well as to the 
phrases " suo-nomine " and " suo-jure ;" but in truth the 
difficulty of arriving at any certain rule remains much as it 
was before. 

In the passage of Cicero, De Orat. lib. i. c. 54, " Quod 
" quum inter rogatus Socrates esset, respondit, sese meruisse, 
" ut amplissimis honoribus et praemiis decoraretur, et ut ei 
M victus quotidianus in Prytaneo publice prseberetur," " sese" 
and "ei" clearly refer to the same person — Socrates ; nor do 
I find in Orelli (vol. i. p. 245) any various reading. Compare 
Zumpt as above ; Diez, Romanische Gramm. b. iii. s. 54. 

Another instance presents itself in the first Philippic, 
c. 10 : — " Ut — hujus tamen diei vocem testem reipublicse 
" relinquam mese perpetuse erga se voluntatis." I see no 
reason for the use of se here. 



88 " SHALL " AND " WILL." App. B. 



(B. ) 

Bosworth (A. S. Diet. p. cxc.) calls the two ordinary A. S. 
tenses " the indefinite and the perfect." Dr. Prichard (ib. p. 171) 
gives the future form of the Welsh verb-substantive thus : — 

Sing, bydhav, bydhi, bydh. 
Plur, bydhwn, bydhweh, bydhant. 

Zeuss (Gramm. Celt. vol. i. p. 482) says of the Irish future, 
" Sing. 1 & 2 pers. non obvia exempla;" the third person 
sing, he gives as bieid, bied, and sometimes bid. He states 
that "beth" was the Cornish and Armoric form for the 
future and subjunctive, as well as root of the verb (p. 539). 
From this writer's mode of speaking I should infer that in 
his opinion a future tense, properly so called, had originally 
belonged to the system of the Celtic verb generally, but I am 
not competent to discuss such a question (see p. 411). 

The Attic use of et/xt, ibo, with its future sense, may be 
held to have some connection with the future sense of one 
form of the verb-substantive, though it is not the same (see 
Grimm, Gesch. der Deutschen Spr. b. ii. s. 892). At any 
rate, the wide-spread tendency to assign this future meaning 
to the form which corresponds with our " be " is very remark- 
able, and must go back to remote times in the history of all 
these kindred languages. It appears to give great additional 
probability to the conjecture that the syllable " bo " in the 
Latin futures of the 1st and 2nd conjugations, as well as in 
those of some other verbs, was in its origin only an appli- 
cation of this very root of the verb-substantive as a suffix. 
Fui, fueram, forem, fuere, or fore, are of course all derived 
from this root, and it is curious that the infinitive " fore " 
still retains its future sense as equivalent to " futurum esse." 
I think this theory at any rate more probable than Professor 
Key's conjecture that in the Latin conjugation the suffixes 
eba and eb may have some connection " with the verb habe, 
" have, which is so common an auxiliary in all languages " 
(see Latin Grammar, p. 64, note). 

We know from such forms as "scibo" (" Nemo ex me 
" scibit," Terent. Phormio. vol. i. 38) and "ibo," that the ter- 



1 



App. c. verb-substantive. 89 

mination " bo," for the future, probably extended much fur- 
ther than it appears to do in our ordinary Latin Grammars. 
Compare Zumpt, Lat. Gramm. § 215 ; Facciolati, in vv. scio 
et eo. Bopp (Comparative Grammar, Transl. p. 889, § 662) 
assumes it as certain that the 3rd and 4th conjugations in 
Latin did originally form their futures in " bo." The ordi- 
nary futures in " am " are evidently allied to the subjunctive 
(compare Philolog. Museum, vol. ii. p. 218). It will be ob- 
served from what is said in the text that the subjunctive was 
used for the future occasionally by Ulfilas, and I believe that 
the same relation is to be traced in Sanscrit. See Bopp. 
Compar. Gramm. Transl. vol. ii. pp. 887, 891 ; Zetiss, Gramm 
Celt. vol. i. p. 539 ; Grimm, Deutsche Gramm. b. iv. s. 177 
n. 2 ; Trans, of Philological Society, 1845, No. 38 ; 1846 
No. 44. Mr. Guest, in these Transactions (vol. ii. p. 223). 
tells us that the verb "be" was long retained for the ex- 
pression of future time in English, more particularly in the 
North, and he quotes examples from Lyndsay and other 
writers in support of this view. 

On the verb " be " in general, and its equivalents, the 
reader may consult Mr. Francis Newman's paper in the 
Classical Museum, No. xxv. p. 254. 



Co.) 

The Scotch and North country forms are " aw," " awin," 
" am," " awingis " (debts), and approach still nearer than our 
own to the Gothic, of which the first person indicative was 
" aih " (see Jameson's Scottish Diet, in w.). Grimm (Gesch. 
der D. Spr. b. ii. s. 905) considers "aih" is the preterite of 
" eigan," " to labour " or " make "— " schaffen." The word, 
therefore, which originally meant " I have made " or " ac- 
" quired by my own labour," assumed, like KeKTrjfjLaL, the 
present sense of " I possess," or " have as my own." 

This verb, according to Grimm's view, is thus what he 
calls a " verschobenes prseteritum," or, as Dr. Latham deno- 
minates it, " a transformed praeterite," of which I have had 



90 " SHALL " AND " WILL." App. C. 

to speak in the text under the verbs " skulan " and " mnna." 
There are so many curious points connected with our verb 
" to owe," and its perfect " ought," and it affords so excellent 
an illustration of the process of transformation of these prae- 
terites, that the reader must excuse me if I lengthen this 
note for the purpose of discussing them. 

In the first place, there is little doubt, I conceive, that the 
earliest meaning of " owe " was that of " agan," " to own," or 
" have as one's own." Shakspere says — 

"lam not worthy of the wealth I owe" 

All's Well that Ends Well, ii. 5— 

and the instances are innumerable. 

In the second place, there is no doubt that " ought" is the 
regular " weak " prseterite of " owe." Thus in Henry IV. 
Part I. iii. 3, "He said the other day you ought him a thou- 
" sand pounds." So in Donne's letters (Southey's Common- 
place Book, i. 336), " They ought the world no more." 
Chaucer uses " ought " impersonally — 

" Well ought us werke." 

Second Nun's Tale, 1. 15,482— 

but I am inclined to think that this is an imitation of the 
construction of such Latin words as " oportet." 

" Ought " itself has thus in some sense become in English 
one of the promoted or transformed perfects, and acquired 
the present sense of duty ; but it has not acquired a second 
weak praeterite of its own, nor has it formed a present infini- 
tive and participle. The want of these last is often very 
inconvenient : we cannot say, " he was known to ought" for 
" he was known to be bound in duty," and the original pre- 
sent " owe" will not express what we want. 

We have no difficulty in seeing how a word which signifies 
that a debt of any kind, whether moral or pecuniary, has 
been due, may be applied to the present obligation of dis- 
charging either : but I confess that I have always felt the 
greatest difficulty in explaining how a verb which meant 
originally " to have as one's own," " to own," came to signify 
" to be bound to pay." Mr. Edwin Guest (Trans, of Philolog. 
Society, 1845, p. 157) says, " The phrases ' he owes me ten 



App. C. " TO OWE " — " OUGHT," ETC. 91 

" ' pounds,' and ' he has ten pounds for me,' may have a 
" closer etymological connection than our knowledge of the 
" world would lead us to expect ; and the use of the verb 
" without the dative, ' he owes ten pounds,' may be founded 
"on a merely derivative meaning." I wish Mr. Guest in 
this passage had explained a little more clearly what the pro- 
cess is which he supposes to have taken place. It seems a 
singular state of things when the fact that a man " has a 
" thing," carries with it the notion that he " has it for some 
" one else to whom he is bound to pay it !" Is it founded, 
on the principle that all property is a trust ; or on the Com- 
munist maxim, " La propriete c'est le vol " ? or does Mr. 
Guest mean to imply that the modern sense of owing a debt 
was attached to these verbs before they acquired that of 
having or owning? — a supposition inconsistent with the 
meaniDg of the Gothic and Anglo-Saxon forms. 

If indeed in the early times of our language " owe " and 
" ought " were used only as in the phrase "he ought to 
" do it," we might suppose that such a sentence was literally 
equivalent to "he had to do it," and was founded on the 
original sense of " have :" but it so happens that in one of 
the earliest relics of the English tongue — the writ or pro- 
clamation of Henry III. in 1258 — the King speaks of "the 
" treowthe that heo us ogen " — that is, " the allegiance that 
" they (our subjects) owe to us." In the version of the same 
document given by Henry in his History of England (but not 
in Palgrave's), the preterite "ogt" further appears in the 
sense of our modern " ought." (Compare Latham on the 
English Language, p. 65 ; Henry's History of England, vol. 
viii. App. 4 ; Palgrave's Proofs and Illustrations, p. cccxlviii.) 
Again in Chaucer we find — 

"By God we owen fourty pounds for stones." 

Sompnoure's Tale, 1. 7688. 

According to the original meaning of " agan " and " owe," 
this ought to mean, " we have forty pounds — they belong 
" to us ;" whereas it really means directly the reverse, " they 
" belong to another." I repeat that I am unable to explain 
this difficulty. 



92 "SHALL" AND -"WILL." App.-D. 

( D. ) 

Gkimm further illustrates this singular etymology by a 
reference to parallel forms in the Lithuanian, Lettish, and 
Old Prussian. The Icelandic "skilja" corresponds with our 
verb " to skill," which has the sense of " to differ." " It 
" skilleth not " is used by Hooker for " it differs not " (see 
Todd's Johnson in v.). If I understand Grimm rightly, he 
conceives that the notion of mental " skill " or understanding 
is based on the material one of cutting in pieces or dissection, 
as we talk of " analysing a subject." 

Our English word " kill " has, I conceive, no connection 
with "skila," but represents the A. S. " cwellan" or " cwsel- 
" Ian," " to quell." In a note Grimm adds that the proper 
meaning of the German " schelten " is " to charge another 
" with a debt." Particular persons seem to have been em- 
ployed to do this publicly to the debtor (compare Deutsche 
Eechtsalterthiimer, ss. 613, 953). Their duty would be to 
declare to the slayer, on the part of the kindred of the slain, 
that he was called on to pay the " wergeld." " Jemanden 
" quit schelten" is quoted by Adelung (Worterbuch, in. v.) 
as an obsolete and provincial idiom for declaring a man free 
from a debt ; but Adelung himself inclines rather to consider 
" schelten " as a frequentative form of " schellen," " to make 
" a noise or ringing sound," than as connected with " schuld." 
Grimm's researches, however, are probably of more weight 
than this conjecture. I ought in passing to observe that if 
Grimm is right in the origin which he assigns to " skulan," all 
apparent relation in form and in meaning between " sollen," 
o^eXXo, dfeiXcQ, debeo, voll, &c, will turn out to be purely 
accidental, and not, as Fr. Thiersch supposes possible, founded 
on the notion of fulfilling a duty. (See his Homerische 
Gramm. § 232 ; compare Philolog. Museum, vol. i. p. 419.) 
Indeed, independently of Grimm's argument based on the 
analogy of " dulgs " and other words, the presence in all the 
earlier forms of this verb of the k or c after the s is very much 
against the etymological relationship of " sollen," " voll," 
o-cjyeXkco, the "sollo" of Festus, and their cognate words. 
The connection of " dulgs " with the modern German " dolch," 
a dagger, is questionable. (See Adelung, Worterbuch, in v.) 



App. E. FUTURE USE OF "IS," ETC. 93 



(E. ) 

I ought to notice some observations of Mr. Guest on the 
origin of a Scotch idiom, with which I am unable to agree. 
That gentleman points out (Trans, of Philolog. Society, vol. 
ii. pp. 151, 225) that the verb-substantive "is" was formerly 
in particular cases employed with all three persons, as for 
instance — 

" I is as ill a miller as is ye " — 

Chaucer's Miller's Tale, 1. 4043. 

M And therefore is I come and eke Allein." 

Ibid., 1. 4029. 

He also observes that Chaucer puts these phrases into the, 
mouth of a person speaking a northern dialect : — 

" Of a town were they born that hight Strother, 

" Fer in the north I cannot telle where/' 

Tyrwhitt's note on this is — " There is a Struther or Strauther 
" in the shire of Fife " — meaning, I presume, Anstruther. 

Mr. Guest then goes on to say, — " This use of ' is ' may 
" have originated in that confusion of forms which often dis- 
" tinguishes a mixed or broken dialect, or it may be a rem- 
" nant of an earlier and simpler grammar than our literature 
" has handed down to us." The first of these causes is pro- 
bable enough, but with regard to the second I believe that 
an earlier grammar would be little likely to be more simple. 
So far as our knowledge extends, all analogy goes to show 
that languages drop forms and inflections instead of acquiring 
them. 

In a subsequent paper the same writer (p. 225) gives some 
examples of what he considers the future sense of " is " with 
all persons, which I cannot think are really such — one in- 
stance is from Eob Roy : — 

" Aweel, aweel," said the Baillie, lt we'se let that be a passover." 
So from ' Tim Bobbin,' and therefore Lancashire : — 

" I'se think on it." 
Until I fell in with Mr. Guest's conjecture, I always con- 
ceived the Scotch abbreviations " I'se," " we'se," to be nothing 



94 " SHALL " AND « WILL." App. F. 

more than corruptions of " I sail," " we sail," for " shall," 
the liquid at the end being slurred over, as is frequently the 
case. It is quite true that in the West of Scotland, especially 
it appears in Kenfrew, " is" is commonly used with all three 
persons ; but there it is employed for " am " and " art," as a 
present tense (see Jameson, Diet, in v. "is"). When An- 
drew Fairservice says, " I'se warrant," I take " warrant " to 
be the verb, and the sentence to mean, " I shall warrant." 
Mr. Guest would make "is" equivalent to " I shall be ;" and 
" warrant" would be the substantive ; but if so, what is to 
be said of the following speech of the same worthy, " Pse 
" he caution the warst stickler that ever stickit a sermon out 
" ower the Tweed yonder, wad lay a ghaist twice as fast as 
" him, wi' his holy water and his idolatrous trinkets." If 
" I'se " represents "I shall," then this construction is expli- 
cable ; but if it stands for " I shall be," then the second 
verb-substantive " be " would seem inadmissible. 



(F. ) 

Ciceeo supplies a good example of this formation in his 
pathetic and indignant letter to Atticus (ix. 10), where he 
says of Pompey, " Ita sullaturit animus ejus et proscripturit 
"dm." Does not the difference in the quantity of the u 
make the connection between the desiderative verbs and the 
future participle very doubtful ? The latter is probably 
allied to the noun of the agent in or, oris, and the feminine 
in iira; like factor, oris, factura (see Bopp, Conjugations- 
System der Sanscrit Sprache, s. 26). The supine, which is 
in fact a verbal substantive retaining its governing power, is 
closely connected with all these forms. 

Now it is singular that all the desideratives should be 
formed in the fourth conjugation, and it has often occurred 
to me (as it has done no doubt to others) that they are really 
formed by combining the supine with " eo," " ire ;" just as 
Tacitus uses the phrase " ultum ivit" (Ann. iv. 73), or 
"raptum ire" (Hist. ii. 6). In this way "esurire" would 
be " esum ire." Again, the analogy of the future passive 
infinitive formed with " iri " and the supine is favourable to 



App. f. latin desiderative VERBS. 95 

this theory. There is a remarkable passage in Aulus Gellius 
on this idiom (x. c. 14), which it appears to me cannot he 
explained unless by supposing that the supine and the infini- 
tive " iri " were taken virtually as coalescing in one word, 
and, if they so coalesce, we have in fact and in form a deside- 
rative verb. A. Gellius says, " ' Audio illi injuriam factum 
" ' iri ' audio contumeliam dictum iri ' — vulgo quoque ita 
" dici, vulgo et istam esse verborum figuram jam in medio 
" loquendi usu — idcircoq. exemplis supersedeo. Sed * con- 
" ' tumelia illi ' vel ' injuria factum itur 5 paulo est remotius : 
" exemplum igitur ponemus : M. Cato pro se contra Cassium 
" — ' atque evenit ita, Quirites, uti in hac con tumelia, quaa 
" ' per hujusce petulantiam factum itur, rei quoque publicaa 
" ' medius fidius miserear Quirites ' — si cut autem ' contume- 
" ' Ham factum iri ' signiiicat \ iri ad contumeliam facien- 
" ' dam'' id est — operam dari quo fiat ; ita ' contumelia mihi 
" 'factum itur' casu tantum immutato idem dicit.'" But 
surely in " contumeliam factum iri" it is commonly assumed 
that " iri " being used as it is called " impersonally," the accu- 
sative " contumeliam " is governed by the supine "factum." 
How, then, can it become the nominative to "factum — itur," 
unless on the supposition that these two words are in fact 
one passive verb, of which the active would be " factum — ire"? 
The essence of a passive structure is that the object of the 
active verb becomes the subject of the passive, which would 
then be the case. In Pliny (xxxii. 47) we have of Crassus, 
" nee fuit satis nisi totum Parthorum esurisset aurum," where 
"esurio" is an active verb, and we might say "esuritur 
" aurum," like the " factum — itur (facturitur) contumelia " of 
Cato. Compare note 68, above, and the reference to the Lexi- 
logus, b. ii. s. 260. 

In favour of this derivation from " ire " may perhaps be 
added the existence of such a future as " esuribo " (see Fac- 
ciol. in v.). Against it, however, we have the change of 
" eo " into " io," though " ambio " affords a precedent for 
this as well as for a derivative from " eo," " ire," sometimes, 
though not always, using the participle present, the gerund, 
and the imperfect, according to the regular form of the fourth 
conjugation. Thus in Yelleius Paterculus we find "insula 
" quam amnis Euphrates ambiebat," though in Ovid (Meta- 



96 " SHALL " AND " WILL." App. F. 

morplios. v. 360) the imperfect is arnbibat, " arnbibat Sicula3 
cautus fundamina terrse." Perhaps, too, it may be said that 
if <; esurire " were nothing more than " esum — ire," we ought 
to find the quantity of the i in " esurltor " different from 
what it is in the line of Martial (hi. 14)— 

" Romam petebat esuritor Tuccius." 

The verbal substantive ambitus, however, retains the short 
vowel of the supine, though the past participle itself seems to 
be long, e. g. — 

" Jussit et ambltae circumdare littora terras." 

Ovid, Metam. i. 37. 
" Fallit et ambitos a principe vendit honores." 

Claudium in Rufmum, 180. 

If " circitor" be ever long, it is probably to be taken as a 
contraction of " circuitor." Compare 

" Quid mecum tibi circitor moleste." 

Priap. xvi. 

See Facciol. iD v. ; Zumpt, Lat. Gramm., ss. 228, 551, 218. 

The elision of the m of the supine offers little difficulty, 
though the insertion of the r in its place may cause more 
hesitation. In " prodesse " and " prodire *' the letter selected 
for insertion in this manner is d, which was at one time 
occasionally interchanged with r. See Buttmann, Lexilogus, 
b. ii. s. 112, note on " Laurus," and b. i. s. 126. 



( 97 ) 



INDEX. 



AGGI0. 



Aggio (Italian) . . . . 78 
Aigan (Gothic) .. .. 60 
Aih (Gothic) .. .. 89 
Ambiebat, Ambibat 95, 96 

Ambio 95 

Ambitus 96 

American use of "shall" 
and " will " 11, 12, 13, 
17, 23, 71 
Analytic system of lan- 
guage . . . . 5, 84 note 
Armoric future . . . . 88 
Aulus Gellius, passage 

of explained . . . . 95 
Auxiliary verbs, power 
of expression . . . . 5 

formation of 59 

Aw, awin, ain (Scotch) 89 



CWELLAN. 



B. 



57 
89 



Basque future 
Be, future sense 
Berners, Lord, his Frois- 

sart 51 

Biad (Irish) 56 

Bible, Authorised Ver- 
sion, use of "shall" 
and" will" 30, 43 to 46 
Bigelow. v. Bemis .. 17 
Boswell . . 18 and note 
BovXonaL . . . . 70 note 



Page 

13 



Brace's Hungary . . 
Burke, use of " shall " 

and "will" 16,21,37,38 
Busu (Lithuan.) Budu 

(Sclavon.) .. .. 56 
Buttmann . . 19 and note 
Bydhav (Welsh).. .; 88 



a 

Cassar, use of " se " . . 86 
Cato (passive future) . . 95 
Celtic futures .. .. 55 
Chalmers, use of " will" 

with first person 11, 12 
Chambers, Bobert 19 note 
Chaucer, use of " shall" 
and "will" .. 46-49 

"ought," "owe" 90, 91 

use of "is" .. 93 

72 
76 
86 
94 
96 



Choshchu (Sclavon.) . . 
Chur-Walsch .. .. 
Cicero, use of " se " . . 

desideratives 

Circitor 

Classical education, effect 

on language . . 83 note 
Colonies, use of "shall" 

and "will" .. .. 12 
Contingent sentences . . 37 
Cornelius Nepos, use of 

"se" 86 

Cornish future . . . . 88 
Cwellan(A. S.) .. .. 92 
G 



98 



INDEX. 



DAC0-K0MAN. 

D. 

Page 

Daco-Roman or Walla- 

chian 72 

Danish 61,67 

Desiderative verb, Latin 94 

Greek 71 

Sanscrit .. .. 72 

Diez, account of Romance 

futures .. .. 76-78 

Dolch (German) .. .. 92 

Dolg(A. S.) .. .. 64 

Dolgr (Norse) . . . . 64 

Donne quoted .. .. 90 

Dulgishaitja 64 

Dulgiskula 64 

Dulgs (Gothic) .. .. 64 
Dutch and Low German 

future 42 

E. 

Edinburgh Review 29-31, 43 

Eigan (Gothic) .. .. 89 

Efjou, ibo 88 

Eo, ire 94 

Ellis, Sir Henry, collec- 
tion of letters . . . . 50 
Esmi (Lithuan.) . . .. 56 
Esthonian future . . .. 57 

Esuribo 95 

Esuritor 96 

Etais, imp. of French 

verb-subst. . . 9 note 

'EOckei 70 



P. 



57 



Finn future 
Fore (Latin) future sense 88 
Freund, Dr. W. .. 76 note 
Froissart, Lord Berners's 51 
Future tense, Celtic . . 88 



HYPOTHETICAL. 

Page 

Future, English, its re- 
gular form . . . . 8 

Romance .. 75, 83 

participle in urus 94 

want of in certain 

languages .. .. 6, 54, 58 



G. 



18 



George III. use of "shall" 
German, modern, future 

auxiliaries .. .. 68 
Gothic future .. 6, 30, 56 
Gower's Florent quoted 48 
Grammar, how far con- 
cerned with "shall" 
and "will" .. .. 
Greek, modern . . 58 
Grisons, dialect of 73, 



9 
71 
76, 



Guest, Mr. E., antiquity 
of "shall" .. .. 

use of "is" 

use of " worth " . . 

Gurney, Gilbert, quoted 



note 

14 
93 

74 
20 



Haban (Gothic) .. .. 59 
Habeo, with infinitive 57, 77 
Hare, Archdeacon 31, sqq. 
Herodotus, use of 6ekco 70, 71 
Homer, construction with 



€ X CO 



11 



ideXco and /3ou\o/xat 

70 note 
Hook, Theodore, quoted 20 
Humboldt, W. v. .. 5 
on Romance lan- 
guages 80 

Hypothetical sentences 37 



INDEX. 



99 



I, J. 

Page 

Ibo (eo) b6 

Icelandic (Munu) . . 61 
Jesni (Sclavon.) .. .. oQ 
Imperative supplied by 

future 26, 35 and note 
Interrogative sentences 37, 39 
Interrogative adverbs, &c. 40 
Johnson, Dr., use of 

"shall" 19 

Ireland, use of "shall" 

and " will " 11, 15, 16, 71 
Is (verb-subst.) .. .. 93 



Kill, etymology . . . . 92 

L. 

Latimer, use of " shall " 
and "will" .. .. 52 

use of " worth " .. 75 

Lewis, Romance Lan- 
guages . . 75 note, 79 
Lithuanian .. .. 55, 92 
Livy, use of " se *' .. 86 
Lucanor, el conde 79 note 
Luther, use of " werden " 69 
Lyndsay, use of " will " 14 

M. 

Magyar future . . . . 57 
Mason, J. Y., use of 

"will" 13 

M^Xeti/ .. 59, 62 note 
Miller, Hugh, use of 

"would" 12 

Mon (Swedish) .. .. 61 
Morgan, Prof. de.. ..9, 33 
Mun (Eng. provincialism) 61 



BOB KOY. 

Page 

Munan (Gothic and A. S.) 

60, 61, 62 

Munu 61 

Murray, Lindley 24 and note 

ar. 

Newman, Mr. F. . . 59, 89 

Norse future .. .. 61 

O. 

Oblique sentences, use 
of "shall" and "will" 

in 22 

Optative, Greek . . 20 note 
Otterbume, ballad of . . 41 
Ottfried quoted . . . . 67 
Owe .. .. 77, 89 note 

Owe, ought 90 

'OcpiWco 92 



P. 

Participle, future 72, 94 

Passive future (Latin) 74, 95 

(German) . . . . 74 

Preterites, displaced or 

transformed 63, 89, 90 
Prichard (Welsh future) 88 

Prodire 96 

Prophecy, language of, 

with "shall" .. 19,24 
Proscripturit (Cicero) . . 94 
Provencal 75 

R. 

Relatives .. .. 39,40 
Pihine, use of " will " on 

the 13,68 

Eob Roy, quotation from 93 



100 



INDEX. 



EOGEKS. 

Page 
Kogers, Abner 17 and note 
Komance languages, fu- 
ture of .. .. 6, 58, 75 



S. 



79 
65 
63 
92 



Sardinian future .. 
Sceal(A. S.) 
Scelmo, scelmic .. 
Scbelten (German) 

Scibo 

Sclavonic verb-subst, 

use of " will " 

Scotland, use of " shall " 

and "will" 11,12. 

23,41 
Shakspere, " will " in 

Hamlet .. .. .. 14 



56 

72 

14, 



nse of " owe' 



.. 90 
.. 64 
63,64 
63,92 
.. 63 
.. 66 



Shall, to owe 
Skal, skila .. 

Skilja 

Skulan (Gothic) 
Skuld (Swedish) .. .. 
Sollen, use for what is 

reported 21 

• use in German, 

Flemish, and Dutch 66 
Spens, Sir Patrick, ballad 

quoted 41 

Subjunctive, relation to 

future .. 10,56,89 
as expressed by 

"should" 10 

Sullaturit (Cicero) . . 94 
Supine (Latin) . . . . 95 



WYCLIFFE. 

Page 

Swedish .. .. 61, 67 
Swiss, German . . 73 note 
Synthetic and analytic 
systems of language 84 



Taim (Irish) 

Tim Bobbin quoted 



ea* 



56 
93 
70 



U, V. 

Ulfilas, future used by 56, 59 
Vairthan (Gothic) 57, 73 
Yerb-substantive, future 

form of .. .. 88,89 
Vestiges of Creation 

quoted 19 

Vilja (Gothic) .. .. 67 

W. 

Wallachian future . . 72 
Walloon dialect 75 and note 
Walpole, H., quoted .. 21 
Welsh future . . . . 55 
Werden (German) 66, 73 
Wergeld .. 63,84,92 
We'se (Scotch) .. .. 93 
When, whenever, con- 
struction with " shall" 39 
Will with first person . . 68 
Worth (English).. .. 74 
Wycliffe, his use of 
"shall" and " will" 44-46 



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